The Divergent Series: Allegiant – Review

The Divergent series has it’s share of competition in the Young Adult Action/Drama genre. After a dismal sequel I had hope that the third installment would come back with a bang to move Divergent up in the ranks of the genre. Alas, Allegiant offers a valiant effort but lacks the story and grit to make it anything more than mediocre.

The third installment of the blockbuster Divergent series franchise, ALLEGIANT takes Tris [Shailene Woodley] and Four [Theo James] into a new world, far more dangerous than ever before.

After the earth-shattering revelations of INSURGENT, Tris must escape with Four and go beyond the wall enclosing Chicago. For the first time ever, they will leave the only city and family they have ever known. Once outside, old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless with the revelation of shocking new truths. Tris and Four must quickly decide who they can trust as a ruthless battle ignites beyond the walls of Chicago which threatens all of humanity. In order to survive, Tris will be forced to make impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love. – Lionsgate

Despite having three writers, Allegient delivers a mess of a story that tries to create side plots featuring each major character, but doing so makes the overall story feel cheap and spread thin. There is a severe lack of depth here, and director Robert Schwentke tries to use CGI to keep the audience invested. There are far too many meaningless layers that feel like they were added to cover up the lackluster plot, have a reason to draw out the runtime, and justify splitting what should have been the final movie into two films. Why do all these young-adult book-to-movie trilogies keep doing this? Oh, right. Money.

There are some redeeming qualities to Allegiant however, and those lie with the humor and action of the film. All of the action scenes are relatively well done and keep the audience awake. This is a step above Insurgent, though the characters never really seem to be in actual danger. Still, the scenes are executed with precision and enough visual excitement to make them successful. The humor of the film is a double edged sword – there are moments of pure hilarity, but those moments happen when the film is not meaning to be funny. Allegiant’s Miles Teller was cast as the comedic relief/troublemaker, but his lines and character arc are both predictable and unimaginative. Humor is instead found in watching Jeff Daniels attempt to choke a little emotion out his character, and seeing our heroine become reduced to a sniveling, moody teenager in order to have conflict in the story.

Everything about Allegiant is mediocre, from the action to the story to the acting. Nothing about it stands out, and the plot feels exhausting because it pulls from so many other movies you’ve already seen. If you aren’t a die-hard fan of the books or the movies so far, there is no reason to put yourself through the end of this series. Allegiant is boring, fruitless, and hopefully the beginning of the end for the teen post-apocalyptic, action/drama movie genres.