Adapted from Rick Yancey’s 2013 novel, “The 5th Wave” stars Chloe Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan, a high school student whose world is upended* when aliens invade*.

    Cassie is the kind of girl who gets home from a party and will let her parents know she’s home on time. Her Dad (Ron Livingston) gives her a thumbs-up*, and she goes to say goodnight to her little brother (Zackary Arthur). Soon, everything changed, Cassie tells us in a voiceover, when an alien craft appeared in the sky.

    An electromagnetic pulse* takes out the world’s power — the first phase. Next come floods, then bird flu, then a ground invasion. All this is shown in a short flashback as prelude*. Cassie and her brother escape the rushing waters of a burst dam* at home in Ohio while coastal cities suffer the worst of it.

    When the bird flu hits, Cassie’s best friend is quarantined* at the local football field, never to be heard from again. Soon the family is leaving their home. They move into a nearby campsite, where Cassie’s father gives her a gun. “Nowhere is safe anymore,” he tells her.

    Before long, Liev Schreiber arrives with a troop of tanks. He asks parents to put their children on buses so they can be taken away to a safe place. However, Cassie gets off the bus when her little brother insists she find his teddy bear. She’s left in the dust, as the boy cries on the back seat.

    Taken to an army base and given the nickname Nugget, the boy is enlisted to fight the invaders in a team led by his sister’s friend Ben Parish (Nick Robinson). Their task of defending the planet against the fifth wave is complicated by the discovery that “the others,” as the aliens are called throughout, can appear as humans.

    Meanwhile, Cassie is walking through the woods, on her way to the military base to find her brother. She’s saved from enemy snipers* by Evan Walker, a farm boy played by Alex Roe.

    Finally, Cassie and Ben team up to rescue Nugget from under the nose of Schreiber’s Colonel Vosch. (SD-Agencies)