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The 5th Wave | 2016 | PG-13 | - 2.6.5

Alien attacks annihilate most of Earth in a torrent of earthquakes, tsunamis and epidemic diseases. Cut off from family, an Ohio teen (Chloë Grace Moretz) is determined to find her five-year-old brother (Zackary Arthur) and she allies herself with a young man who has useful skills (Alex Roe). Also with Liv Schreiber, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maika Monroe, Maria Bello and Maggie Siff. Directed by J. Blakeson. [1:46]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A teen girl and a teen boy kiss passionately in two scenes: in one of the scenes we see through an abandoned car window at night that they are lying down and the scene ends (sex is implied).
 In co-ed barracks a teen boy asks a teen girl to play strip poker and she hits him hard in the throat, shouting, as the boy sits hard onto a bench; she says she will kill anyone who touches her. We hear that a teen girl wrote about a crush on a high-school football player and another girl texts her: "I'm going to tell him you're ready for end-of-this-world sex." A teen boy says that he is half human and half alien and that love is a trick, but later says that he chooses to be human and believe in love.
 A teen boy is nude to the waist as he bathes in a river and we see his bare back and chest as a teen girl stares at him and runs away. Five teen boys in a long shot at a nighttime pool party are bare-chested (we cannot see details). We see a close-up of buttocks in tight jeans in a couple of scenes.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - Aliens in the form of glowing green octopuses the size of softballs live inside human skulls by attaching to the frontal lobes of the brain; their mother-ship is a huge disk rimmed with spikes that hovers over a city.
 When an alien ship first appears the power grid dies and all vehicles lose power causing cars to swerve off highways, crash into one another and flip upside down as we see burning cars and a few dead bodies sprawled on highway pavement (some bodies have a little blood on their chest or beside them), a jetliner crashes near a school and explodes into flames as students watch in terror while cars burn in high flames in an alley; scenes of cities show large swaths of debris covering sidewalks and streets in front of buildings from which glass is shattered to the floors.
 A flood fills a forest and two children climb a tree to avoid quaking ground and muddy water filled with debris and home furnishings. Flood waters fill a glass skyscraper completely, overwhelming the screaming people inside. We see a huge tidal wave overwhelm an Eastern Seaboard city followed by scenes of other world cities, flooded and decaying.
 A teen girl with an M-16 rifle runs through the woods, panting until she finds a convenience store that is covered with debris and broken glass and we hear someone call to her from off-screen and then see a teen boy with a handgun sitting in a room; the girl points her rifle at him and he says he is holding his stomach together with his other hand and when he begins to move it, something gleams and the girl shoots and kills the boy (we see blood covering his hand) and as she pulls his hand away we see that the gleam was a silver cross; we see a flashback of this scene later. A teen boy takes teens and kids to search for aliens at night in a city near an Air Force base; their helmets show aliens as having glowing green heads and the boys and girls (one of whom is only 7 and keeps screaming) shoot and kill about eight aliens (no blood is shown); they hide in a wrecked city bus and gunshots come inside killing an older teen boy (a little blood is seen). An argument begins in a meeting room when a commander insists that people be screened for alien infection and a man pulls a gun and curses, soldiers draw rifles and we hear many shots from handguns and automatic rifles as a few people fall; a teen girl looks panicked, runs away and when she returns hours later she finds a huge pile of dead bodies (with a little blood) and her father on his back, dead with his eyes open (she cries and runs away). A teen girl finds a highway clogged with crashed vehicles and a few bodies; a shot sounds and we see her grab her bloody thigh as she crawls under a truck to avoid several other gunshots and passes out after firing all the shots from her handgun. A teen girl sets a bus to explode and the rest of a squad with her runs away as huge flames fill the screen and cover a block of sidewalk; the leader asks a teen girl to shoot him in the side so he will not die, and the screen goes black before we hear the shot. In the woods at night a man fires a rifle at a teen boy, who takes it away and fights off three other men, killing them with a wooden club by slamming their heads on a car and breaking one man's neck. A teen girl sees a windshield break out of the car in which she sits and kicks a man in the throat to escape and a teen boy kills the man with a point blank gunshot. A man fires a rifle at a teen girl and another man shoots the first man in the elbow. A teen girl limps through woods and sets off a trip line alarm when a teen boy grabs her and covers her mouth so a hunter of humans will not hear her.
 A teen girl punches a medic in the face, strangles her with a cord, slams her into a wall, receives a punch, then strangles and slams the medic's face into a thick glass partition, killing her (we see cracked glass and a lipstick print, but no blood). A teen boy drops from a ceiling and disarms two soldiers, killing them on the floor with shots from a handgun (no blood shows).
 We hear muffled explosions and a teen boy runs down a corridor where he meets a teen girl (they both have handguns) and they run to barracks and find another teen boy, who says he set explosives all over the building.
 A teen girl wakes up in a bed with her leg bandaged and an amateur IV of saline dripping into her arm; she removes the needles, falls twice as she gets out of bed and a teen boy enters and finds blood covering the sheets and carries her to the bathroom where we see her hands are bloody; the boy sews up the wound with a curved needle and we see more blood as the girl shouts in pain, the boy re-bandages her wound and we see substantial blood. Several scenes show a woman injecting transponders into the backs of the necks of teens and children; the children take out the bloody transponders and put them back in a few times, but finally remove them and toss them away in later scenes. In a medical room, a female medic forces a teen boy to look at a fluoroscope image of a boy who has a green octopus inside his skull; the viewer pushes a red button to destroy the creature as he is ordered. A wounded teen boy limps to a helicopter and is taken back to a base (no blood showing) and we see a bandage on his stomach under his shirt later.
 A man, a young boy, and a teen girl walk to a refugee camp, where volunteers carry rifles to guard the people; the man gives the girl a gun and we hear muffled gunshots and explosions off screen. We see a large tent-city medical complex with many men and women of all ages on cots and wearing surgical masks, coughing loudly while teens and children are lined up at an examination tent; a nurse shouts at her teen daughter to go home to avoid infection. At a USAF base surrounded by fences and razor wire, children ages 5 – 17 are put through a harsh boot camp with obstacle courses and simulation attack drills, along with training using handguns and assault rifles. Several scenes show youth lined up at a firing range, shooting paper targets; this includes a 5-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. At a military martial arts class, a teen girl throws a teen boy onto a mat and he does the same to her; she teaches his squadron, including a five-year-old boy to shoot accurately.
 A convoy of US Army jeeps arrives at a refugee camp in a cloud of dust and divides the people into under-18 and adults; kids are forced into school buses and adults into a large meeting room in the camp, and then the kids are transported to an Air Force Base, famous for its UFO history and reverse engineering of alien technology. Hundreds of children are forced onto transport planes and when a teen girl finds her young brother, she takes him away and a helicopter shoots at them as the ground breaks apart in an earthquake, but they escape. Several young people steal a large jeep and escape a military base before we see the screen in the background fill with smoke among loud explosions; rocks and debris fly toward the screen, but miss the jeep.
 An older youth ties a boy up in a shower stall to prevent him from going on missions, but a little girl goes on urban assault missions and screams continually. A teen girl walks from a refugee camp to an Air Force base 80 miles away. A teen girl misses a bus and cries as she runs after it and her young brother inside cries.
 A narrator states that aliens modified the avian flu that caused previous epidemics on Earth and sent the new virus into the atmosphere to kill millions of people and although no treatment worked, a few people survived. We hear that every major city on Earth is destroyed; later, we hear that relatives of surviving teens died in earthquakes or from avian flu. We see a headstone marked "Mommy" on a backyard grave and hear that a nurse died; her daughter and young son cry. A teen boy and a teen girl argue several times, and then decide to travel together on foot to an Air Force base to rescue the girl's young brother. We hear that aliens have taken over human bodies and are out to kill all that survive, even training human children to do the same. A teen boy and a teen girl argue and she goes to an Air Force base, threatening to kill him if he follows. At a military base a teen boy and an adult who is an alien argue; the alien says he will kill the boy because humans are taking up space that aliens need.

LANGUAGE 5 - About 2 F-words, 5 scatological terms, 6 anatomical terms, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (weird, geniuses, cheerleader, hick), exclamations (shut-up, oh gee), 12 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God, Jesus, Holy [scatological term deleted]).

SUBSTANCE USE - Teen boys and teen girls drink beer at an unsupervised house party (we do not see anyone become intoxicated).

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Extraterrestrial life, alien attacks, Wright Patterson Air Force Base UFO history, danger, death, genocide, child soldiers, lies, manipulation, human tracking devices, survival, fear, relationships, friendship, trust, cooperation.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Extraterrestrial life, alien attacks, Wright Patterson Air Force Base UFO history, danger, death, genocide, child soldiers, lies, manipulation, human tracking devices, survival, fear, relationships, friendship, trust, cooperation.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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