This is only his second feature, and is a big ask. Much muscle-rippling and skinny-dipping ensues as Cassie oohs and aahs in a girlie fashion that erodes her kick-ass (no pun intended) characterization to date. Jaw-dropping dumbness now follows with a 'see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away' plot-twist casting Cassie onto her solo-mission, and the film declines into a rather poor 'Hunger-maze-giance' wannabe with Cassie torn between the affections of old crush Ben (Nick "Jurassic World" Robinson) and mysterious saviour Evan (Alex Roe).
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There however the plot goes awry, with the aliens making a seemingly ridiculous strategic move. Like I said, quite a promising premise, and it flows quite nicely until the family get to a Fort Wilderness style sanctuary in the forest. Against this stressful backdrop, the ever-reliable Chloe Grace-Moretz ("Kick Ass" "Let the Right One In") plays Cassie who after getting separated from her younger brother Sam (Zackery Arthur) faces the dangers of a cross-country Alabama trek to rescue him. The aliens are throwing calamity after calamity down at small-town America in 'waves': earthquakes tidal surges modified bird flu and bombings.
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An alien spacecraft has put itself into a threatening earth orbit (note: actually 'orbiting' - as a nod to science guys like me - rather than just inexplicably hanging there in the sky, as Douglas Adams once put it, "in much the same way that bricks don't"). As a low-budget sci-fi flick, The Fifth Wave starts quite promisingly with a more logical continuation from the opening scenes of "Independence Day".