Taken on its own, “The 5th Wave” is an effectively decent post-apocalyptic, young-adult, world-in-the-balance survival thriller. Yet the multitudinous devotees of Rick Yancey’s wildly successful 2013 novel may have more issues with what has been edited or left out entirely than with what’s survived the transition. Still, the film will ride the inevitable wave of fandom and newcomers alike to moderate box office and a healthy afterlife, allowing producers Tobey Maguire and Graham King to move forward with production of the other two books in the author’s proposed trilogy, “The Infinite Sea” (2014) and “The Last Star,” to be published later this year.

Enough of Yancey’s ambitious narrative has made the final cut to reflect an arrestingly original spin on trendy genre tropes. In the present day, Ohio teenager Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz) does what modern young people do: drink beer at unsupervised house parties, moon over boys — in this case,...