Back in the 2000s and 2010s, you could bet your house on any notable YA literary series consisting of multiple books being adapted for the big screen to capitalize on a bandwagon that yielded a lot more misses than hits. One of the worst offenders was The 5th Wave, which scored some of the worst reviews the once-hot genre had ever seen.
A 17 percent critical score and 38 percent user rating on Rotten Tomatoes is not the sort of reception that generates sequels, with any plans to bring author Rick Yancey’s The Infinite Sea or The Last Star being swiftly cast aside, even if the interminable sci-fi spectacular did manage to earn a solid-if-unspectacular $110 million from multiplexes.
Chloë Grace Moretz heads up the ensemble as a teenager who does everything within her power to be reunited with her brother in the midst of the titular attack from enemies hailing from well beyond the stars. Unfortunately, the plot throws some laughable contrivances and woefully substandard CGI into the mix, all while following a narrative template you’ve seen a hundred times before.
Despite being cast onto the cinematic scrapheap shortly after its January 2016 release, The 5th Wave has been mounting an offensive of its own on streaming, with FlixPatrol revealing the derided dud as one of Netflix’s most-watched titles globally, and it’s even secured a Top 10 spot in the United Kingdom into the bargain.
As planned trilogy-launchers go, things did not go to plan in this instance, but at least the panned blockbuster is showing surprising legs to endure on-demand.