We’ve seen more than our fair share of alien apocalypse movies, and, for a while, it seemed like Hollywood was all invasion’d out. But now that the studios are all obsessed with turning young adult novels into films, things are coming full circle with the movie adaptation of Rick Yancey’s YA novel The 5th Wave.
The movie features Chloë Grace Moretz as 16-year-old Cassie Sullivan, a teenager just trying to navigate high school when angry-looking saucer ships with big dangling cannon dicks mysteriously arrive and hover over major cities around the world. But instead of wiping everyone out Independence Day style, the aliens take a five-wave approach to purging the world; power outages, earthquakes, plagues, body-snatching, and the fifth wave… invasion.
There’s nothing particularly new or unique about this movie; you could play a game and name the end of the world movie each shot from the trailer is ripping off. You’ve got your standard destructions of various world monuments in there; this time, London Bridge comes falling down. And, of course, all the young are sent to Apocalypse High to learn survival skills to fight the aliens; it wouldn’t be a YA movie without that particular trope. But the novel sold like gangbusters and has a pretty rabid fanbase, which might be enough to turn it into a sleeper hit this winter.
The 5th Wave comes out Jan. 15, 2016.
