Allegiant

This movie wouldn't have sucked if you enjoy listening to painfully obvious messages like, "is it better to kill a healthy child or a sick old man?" Or, "people are sheep. They need a shepherd, lest they be slaughtered." Or, "Leaders make tough decisions to protect their people." Now look, they're all well-meaning philosophical statements, but hasn't The Hunger Games already done all this slightly better?

Not to mention there's so much lazy exposition through computers and characters saying their exact feelings in the most obvious way. Seriously, this series is 4% emotion and 96% exposition.

That's really one of the only pluses of this teen franchise wannabee. The most excruciating part of this movie series, especially this one, is the acting. Although all the actors still look the part, their performances will stab you in the ears and eyes because of their absolute disinterest. All they do is put on one clueless facial expression, leading actress Shailene Woodley having the worst case of it. Her pale face turns intentionally spectacular moments into absolutely hollow wastes of screen time, she won't even rattle after hearing her life is on the line. Then there is of course more of her mega awkward romance with Theo James, two who you can tell she doesn't really like in real life. She barely even looks him in the eye.

The pain doesn't stop there though. The Whiplash star Miles Teller gives the most inexcusably annoying performance in the series. I can't put my finger on as to why, but every time the kid opens his mouth, I just want to strangle his neck and yell in his face.

At least the new villain played by Jeff Daniels acts different from the rest, as he miraculously overplays the part, yet at the same time underplays it.

These dreadful performances make me seriously plead, "why Lionsgate, why? Why get Robert Schwentke to direct?" He showed no appreciation to what he was doing with the story's message of union within people. He rather follows the directing advice of George Lucas by telling his actors, "faster and more intense." Except he took faster as in "let's get this take done faster" and more intense as in "we should more intensely get our scenes filmed today so we can premiere this movie in six months as scheduled!"

So, what's going to happen next? Will Lionsgate change the controversial ending of the book? I don't think there's any reason to worry, as reading the books would prove more valuable than seeing these half-baked movies. The books bring some meaningful messages about how our thoughts and feelings create more safety than if we were without them, and how we ought to be unified in our diversities, not segregated by categories. So say no to cliques. We are one as a nation. While Harry Potter did add to my life as a teen by making me feel like I belong in a society of segregation, the Divergent book series also do a satisfactory job at teaching our current youth to ignore the government's declarations on segregation. Yet the movies, Allegiant in particular, insults Veronica Roth's thoughts on America. So I won't be watching this on Blu-ray, and neither will you.