Meet Cassie, the new Katniss Everdeen. Cassie was a normal teenage girl, right up until the aliens attacked. The “others” as they are called, come in waves, first taking the electricity, then causing natural disasters, plague, and invasion. In this apocalyptic world, she is forced to travel through the woods and avoid the Others in order to find her brother who is being held by the U.S. Army.
Cassie is played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who singlehandedly carries the movie. Since a lot of the movie is spent with Cassie alone as she walks in the woods and searchers for her brother. Moretz’s great acting and personality saves those scenes from becoming dry and uninteresting. This acting, coupled with the beginning exposition that explains how the Others came, makes Cassie a likely, albeit flawed character.
This beginning exposition starts the film off slowly, and the major action scenes don’t occur until much later in the film. However, the background information was engaging, and if it you enjoy the young adult dystopian genre, you are sure to be interested.
This film does follow the trend of other dystopian novels like The Hunger Games and Divergent, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in heart. There are several touching moments, not limited to Cassie herself, and these moments prevent the movie from becoming just another alien horror flick. There are also a few one liners, and while they don’t make the film a comedy, they do bring some lightness to an otherwise heavy tale.
Cassie is also much different from other heroines, and a polar opposite of boy-dependent characters, like Bella Swan. And while the film does feature a typical love triangle, Cassie is just as strong a character as either boy, or when the loyalties of one of them are in question, doesn’t hesitate to leave him behind. She doesn’t depend on the boys to get things done, or to come to her aid or to kill her enemies, she just does it herself. Her loyalties are more towards her brother than any other boy who tries to steal her heart.
The main problem with the movie was that it was so predictable, and the characters tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves, leaving little mystery or shock. If you think someone is a bad guy, they probably are, and the final scenes of the movie, while exciting, aren’t surprising.
The movie is also fairly unoriginal, and while this exact concept hasn’t been done before, it was a mix of The Host and The Hunger Games, and was pretty much the same as other dystopian films. This wasn’t a film for everybody, but if you like young adult apocalyptic stories, than this film is for you.
7/10
