The 5th Wave Soundtrack Review: This is a review of the film score The 5th Wave by Henry Jackman.
Buy the score here (if available)
At a glance:
Geek Score: 83.6
Total Minutes Of Excellence: 19.3
Album Excellence: 35.7%
How are the scores calculated and what does it mean?
The 5th Wave is a 2016 American science fiction film directed by J Blakeson and starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Ron Livingston and Maria Bello. It is based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Rick Yancey. Four waves of increasingly deadly attacks have left most of Earth decimated. Against a backdrop of fear and distrust, Cassie is on the run, desperately trying to save her younger brother. As she prepares for the inevitable and lethal 5th wave, Cassie teams up with a young man who may become her final hope – if she can only trust him. The score is composed by Henry Jackman.
The score opens with ‘Prologue’, a trembling sci-fi sounding dark synth creates the mood of upcoming mayhem. I quite like the mood it’s setting. Judging by the Music, I get a feeling of nervousness, that something is about to happen, something bad. Even so, as a prologue it only does it’s job and I can’t say it totally clicks with me. ‘Tsunami’ opens interesting with this swirling string, and you think “Rise Of The Valkyries” right away. This is more of a dramatic piece and of course, the name “Tsunami” is name of terror. The music is interesting, the way it is set up. The strings specially makes it stand out. I can’t remember a recent action piece using strings quite like this. It’s good, hectic, but I don’t feel the full weight of it. It’s a tsunami, it should wash over you with power and force. ‘Aftermath’ is a nice “conclusion” piece with some interesting music in it. I particularly enjoy the last 30 seconds of it, very enjoyable, but nothing that sticks.
Something great happens in the middle of this score starting with ‘Evan’ a beautiful minimalistic piece of music. It’s followed by ‘Dayton’ a strong sci-fi inspired tense thriller cue. This is just the start for a sequence of great cues one after another. It’s like Jackman hit the reset button and started fresh. This is what I wanted to hear all along. Overall it’s an inconsistent listening experience, but there’s enough material here to make at least a couple of great suites. There’s nothing memorable here though, but it works best as a standalone listen and I doubt it will get many replays for me this year but you never know. My feeling is that there will be sci-fi scores superior to this one in 2016, but like I said, it’s a good listen if you can pick out the good stuff.
HIGHLIGHTS:
6. One Degree Of Separation
11. Evan
12. Dayton
13. 5th Wave
14. Under Fire
15. Flashback
17. Finding Sam
19. Epilogue
