Based on Rick Yancey’s novel of the same name J Blakeson delivered a silver screen adaptation starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe, and Liev Schreiber.

Premise: Four waves of increasingly deadly attacks have left most of Earth in ruin. Against a backdrop of fear and distrust, Cassie is on the run, desperately trying to save her younger brother. As she prepares for the inevitable and lethal fifth wave, Cassie teams up with a young man who may become her final hope – if she can only trust him.

Review: The 5th Wave book was a pleasant surprise when I read so I was looking forward to the movie. Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie made sense to me,  alleviating any worries I might have had about a silver screen adaptation.

Beat by beat the movie reflected the book. It was nice, at first, to see it take form but that feeling kind of died down. The movie wasn’t hitting all the marks. The comedic  was off, the the acting wasn’t always amazing, but overall the biggest problem was the pacing. They tried to cram a lot in a limited amount of time and failed to time it out perfectly. It’s not clear how much time goes by, which makes bonds between the characters look too weak for them to care that much about one another, or the skills these kid soldier have really easy to acquire.

The few changes they made to the story was smart, and some of the action scenes were well done, but these efforts became obsolete with the way the movie was directed and edited. And for some obscure reason I feel like the budget was spent poorly. I don’t know why,  I guess it looks that way.

The 5th Wave remains an entertaining movie but it feels more like a teen flick for prepubescent tweets than a Young Adult movie.

What’s your take on it?