Earlier this year, desperate survivors ’ thriller The 5^th Wave came to theaters and then DVD.

In The 5^th Wave, getting through a plagued world is a matter of slender hope.

The situation is tough. Plagues sweep through America because of an alien force somewhere in the atmosphere.

The alien force is causing power outages, earthquakes, a bird virus, and alien visitors to wipe out the humans.

Then there is the fifth wave, apparently the worst of the plagues or disasters.

Teenager Cassie (Chloe Grace Moretz) has to fend for herself in this increasingly volatile country.

She has a reason to survive. A slender hope, though slender, is still a lifeline.

This is surviving by the smell of an oily rag. In other words, it is desperate survival.

The 5^th Wave is not showing us the gravitas of such a desperate situation. The movie is not gritty or haunting. But it does put desperate survival out there in ways we understand.

Watching The 5^th Wave, we can sense what going through a disaster is like. We can imagine our prized possessions and way of life going ‘up in smoke’.

We can imagine the things we own and striven for, coming to nothing.

We can imagine the world or part of the world going through trial and tribulation, somehow.

We can imagine disasters individually or personally. We can imagine disasters locally and globally. We can imagine these because life has sometimes thrown out doses of reality, in real life and over the media.

We can know what it is like to survive desperately and to cling onto a slender thread of hope.

We can therefore identity with The 5^th Wave’s desperate survivors.

The slender thread of hope is well worth hanging onto it. It can lead to a place of discovery, of where one finds shelter from the storm. Slender hope can lead desperate survivors to higher ground.

The 5^th Wave is based on Rick Yancey’s young adult novel