Thank you the 5th Wave movie, for turning my favorite book into yet another Hollywood dystopian flop.

Let it first be known that I am a die-hard “teenagers fighting the laws of post apocalyptic society” fan. I can spend hours in the Barnes and Noble Teen Sci-Fi section pouring over a stack of books. Through this I have developed an ability to sense which plotlines are just too cheesy, and which books will succeed when they are inevitably turned into movies. I have known since the fateful day of its announcement that this movie would be piece of trash.

To be fair, the 5th Wave stood no chance. The entire beauty of the book lies in the reader’s ability to create their own image of the chaos. While the reader gets to imagine their own personal apocalyptic world, the watcher sits through 2 hours of bad movie effects.

Embracing my new position as a watcher, I decided that my time would be best spent making a list of everything that betrayed this amazing book. The primary offender, it is the apocalypse, yet apparently everyone still takes great care to wear mascara and have perfectly filled in eyebrows. The first wave of destruction may have taken out all our power and we might be stranded in the wilderness, but amazingly Cassie Sullivan is still able to have her hair perfectly curled everyday. And don’t worry Ringer, you may be in intense army training, but you still have time to put on your super duper intimidating eyeliner everyday.

Most importantly, the majority of the people in this movie are teenagers. I am quite jealous that taking part in the apocalypse excludes you from having to have acne.

I do have to give director J Blakeson some credit. Unlike most movie casts, this one actually has a teenage main character played by a teenager. However, Chloë Grace Moretz was in no way shape or form the right actress to play Cassie Sullivan. Sure she brought some much needed publicity to the film, but putting some dirt on her face does not change the fact that Cassie does not look like a Hollywood celebrity. Instead of the socially awkward high schooler becoming a self-confident survivor, that one perfect popular girl got to survive the apocalypse, a completely unfair move to her character.

To a watcher, this movie was probably decent due to the book’s intricate plotline. To those of us who had the honor of reading the book before Columbia Pictures exploited it, get ready to watch everything that gave the 5th Wave its spark die.