The 5th Wave: horror without fear, science fiction without ideas

This photo provided by Sony Pictures Entertainment shows, Nick Robinson as Ben Parish in a scene from the Columbia Pictures release, "The 5th Wave." The movie opens in U.S. theaters on Jan. 22, 2016. (Chuck Zlotnick/Sony/Columbia Pictures via AP).

Unisex boot-camp adolescent training scenes where boy/girl one-on-one martial arts is the abstinence equivalent of sex? Check. Well, this one starts in a lively way, and the natural disaster scenes of giant waves crashing over buildings are pretty

Even before the storm, all three of the biggest new releases this weekend—the Robert De Niro/Zac Efron road trip comedy Dirty Grandpa, the young adult sci-fi invasion yarn The 5th Wave, and the doll-centric horror tale The Boy—were tracking around

This photo provided by Sony Pictures Entertainment shows, Nick Robinson as Ben Parish in a scene from the Columbia Pictures release, "The 5th Wave." The movie opens in U.S. theaters on Jan. 22, 2016. (Chuck Zlotnick/Sony/Columbia Pictures via AP).

Even before the storm, all three of the biggest new releases this weekend—the Robert De Niro/Zac Efron road trip comedy Dirty Grandpa, the young adult sci-fi invasion yarn The 5th Wave, and the doll-centric horror tale The Boy—were tracking around