5th Wave, The
Entry updated 28 September 2026. Tagged: Film.
US film (2016). Columbia Pictures. Directed by J Blakeson. Written by Akiva Goldsman, Susanna Grant, and Jeff Pinkner, based on the novel The 5th Wave (2013) by Rick Yancey. Cast includes Zachary Archer, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Maika Monroe, Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe, Liev Schweiber and Maggie Siff. 112 minutes. Colour.
Unseen Alien invaders orbiting Earth have unleashed a series of "Waves" to prepare for an Invasion. The "First Wave" is a powerful electromagnetic pulse that shuts down all of Earth's engines and Communications, including the internet, as noticed by teenagers like Cassie Sullivan (Moretz) when their cellphones stop working. The "Second Wave" is a series of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. After the "Third Wave", a ruinous global plague (see Pandemic), the aliens in their "Fourth Wave" activate human quislings, long ago secretly taken over by aliens, to murder people. Amidst all of these events, Cassie, her brother Sam (Archer), and her father Oliver (Livingston) flee to a refugee camp, where an Army officer (Schweiber), secretly an alien agent, takes the children away and slaughters the adults. At another base, the aliens indoctrinate the children to believe that the other surviving humans are controlled by aliens and train them to kill them – the "Fifth Wave". But Cassie is rescued by Evan (Roe), a former quisling who has recovered his human character. With the help of another ally, Ben (Robinson), they take Sam away from his squad of killers, and Evan destroys the base while Cassie, Ben, and Sam are left free to contemplate their future, preparing for a sequel based on the other two books of Yancey's trilogy. but it never arrived because of the disappointing audience response to this film.
In one respect, Yancey's novel and this film intelligently update the standard stories of alien invasions that Cassie ridicules: "They swoop down from the sky in their flying saucers to level New York and Tokyo and London, or they march across the countryside in huge machines that look living mechanical spiders, ray guns blasting away, and always, always, humanity sets aside its differences and bands together to defeat the alien horde. David slays Goliath, and everybody (except Goliath) goes home happy." Such scenarios, she continues, are "crap ... like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it." Instead, aliens intent upon conquering Earth would surely employ their advanced Technology to safely devastate Earth from afar. Yet Yancey was forced to contradict his own thesis by then having the aliens engaging in the standard practice of taking over human bodies and killing humans one by one, making them vulnerable to human defences – and providing, in contrast to long-distance manipulation, the sort of thrilling action that successful novels and films require. But the film, like others in recent decades, does reassure adults and validate young people by showing that they are not pampered snowflakes addicted to their screens but would rise to the occasion and forcefully deal with threats like an alien invasion. [GW]
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