Netflix Users Have Just Hours Left To Stream a Forgotten Sci-Fi Disaster Movie

The high-stakes, end-of-the-world scenarios of sci-fi disaster movies make them some of the most thrilling movies to hit the screen. Whether it’s the dawn of a new ice age in The Day After Tomorrow or the planet-destroying comet in Greenland, apocalyptic survival movies offer edge-of-your-seat, high-stakes escapism, but not every film has gotten the same amount of attention. A sci-fi disaster film from the 2010s has largely been forgotten, and Netflix subscribers are running out of time to rediscover it.

Arriving in 2016 towards the end of the peak YA dystopian thriller era, The 5th Wave has largely been overlooked amid more popular genre releases like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and I Am Number Four. The movie, based on Rick Yancey’s 2013 novel of the same name, is scheduled to stop streaming on Netflix on February 1st. The 5th Wave stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan, a 16-year-old girl trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by four successive, increasingly deadly waves of alien attacks.

The 5th Wave 2016 Is Perfect for Fans of YA Dystopian Thrillers Like The Hunger Games and Divergent

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The 5th Wave isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s a satisfying enough film to make for a good watch for fans of other popular YA dystopian thrillers. The movie effectively checks all of the genre tropes, including a focus on teen survival in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world where a distrust in a manipulative authority has forced teens to fight back. Similar to The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen, the movie in particular focuses on a young and capable female protagonist thrust into situations where they must defy authority to survive. That fast-paced, YA-focused tale of survival is blended with plenty of action, and of course, romantic subplots.

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The problem with The 5th Wave is that it just doesn’t do the YA adventure as well as some of those more notable entries. The movie earned rotten critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes of just 17% and a slightly better 38%. When it comes down to it, The 5th Wave really just feels like a collection of recycled ideas from other YA stories, a checklist addition to the genre that lacked originality and suspense and suffered from weak world-building, pretty poor pacing that crushes the most exciting elements into the first 30 minutes, and a forced teen love triangle that overshadows the interesting post-apocalyptic premise. That’s not to say that it’s not worth watching. If you’re looking for a YA-focused post-apocalyptic story with some juicy bits, then The 5th Wave is a pretty good guilty pleasure watch.

Where to Stream The 5th Wave After It Leaves Netflix?

One streamer’s loss is another’s game, because The 5th Wave is simply moving platforms. On the same day that The 5th Wave stops streaming on Netflix, it will appear in Tubi’s free streaming library, ensuring that fans can continue to have easy access to the film.

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