★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

Very recently I referred to Quentin Tarantino’s current method of film-making as ‘by-the-numbers’. Well, allow me to humbly beg your forgiveness Quentin, in light of The 5th Wave, a movie so clammily uniform it views like a flow chart.





Stop me if any of these sound familiar: feisty teenage heroine? Dystopian future? Younger sibling in need of protection, calmed by a lullaby? Love triangle? Manipulation of children? If you thought the young adult genre had already passed its prime with the second Divergent, you’d be right. There is not a single thing in this formula that we haven’t seen performed elsewhere, and – crucially – better.





We enter the fray with our lead, Cassie (Chlöe Grace Moretz), on the run. She’s been separated from her younger brother: an alien invasion has wiped out a decent chunk of mankind in a series of attacks known as ‘waves’, and surviving children have been rounded up by the armed forces in a last-ditch attempt to fight back. All is explained to us via a customary voiceover from our protagonist. It feels a lifetime ago that The Hunger Games first showed the genre how to handle character introductions: haunting imagery, beautifully composed music and superior production design trumps stilted narration any day.





I’ve had a great fondness for Moretz since her barn-storming turn back in Kick-Ass, and I sense she’s been after a role that showcases her true prowess for a long time. Alas, Cassie is a bore. Proving her independence very early on, she is thereafter relegated to being rescued time and again by hunky hick Evan (Alex Roe) and high-school crush Ben (Nick Robinson). “No sexist or demeaning comments!” shrieks emo-eyed army recruit Ringer (Maika Monroe), the camera gazing laddishly at her backside as Cassie goes weak-kneed at the sight of Evan splashing his torso with lake water.





Moretz’ dwindling magnetism aside, the only recognisable talent to guide us is a visibly snoozing Liev ‘please see me in Spotlight instead’ Schreiber. He and Robinson form the more intriguing of the lacklustre story threads, but any investment is rapidly erased by the risible dialogue and stale-faced acting.





With slack enthusiasm for anyone to make it out alive, the manifold issues with the narrative emerge in droves: if the aliens (or ‘Others’, because it’s YA fiction and nothing can have a normal name) want rid of humanity, why the incessant fiddling around? Why is the ‘big reveal’ getting such a massive build-up when it’s signposted with blinding neon flares? Almost as flimsy as the plot are the special effects: planes dropping from the sky elicit the disdainful laughter commonly reserved for straight-to-video sludge from The Asylum.





At some point we’ll stop comparing the endless stream of YA hokum by the standards of The Hunger Games, but at least that series wasn’t afraid to show famous people knee-deep in muck, squeezing pus out of their faces or pulling shrapnel from torn clothes. Judging by everyone’s perfectly manicured appearance in The 5th Wave, the vital list of apocalypse supplies has been extended to include hair product and straighteners.