Amazon Prime’s recent iteration of H.G Wells’ War of the Worlds is easily one of 2025’s worst films. The original 1898 novel captivated audiences around the world, trailblazing the alien invasion genre. It inspires such awe that the book has never been out of print. This latest film adaptation inspires awe for all the wrong reasons. It’s so creatively bankrupt and so utterly brazen in its questionable ethics that you simply cannot believe what you’re watching.
Revamped for the modern day, the protagonist is Will Radford (Ice Cube). He’s an uptight workaholic for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), working for a government observation programme. This is to the chagrin of his two adult children, Dave and Faith (Henry Hunter Hall and Iman Benson respectively), both of whom Will spies on using said programme. The opening scenes feature the usual tired spiel of a dad who works too much lecturing his fully grown kids on what life is all about. So far so bland. But this is quickly overshadowed by a sudden and brutal alien invasion. With entire countries collapsing under the weight of the aliens’ might, Will uses everything in his arsenal, which includes much of the DHS’s technological prowess, to save his kids and fight back against the mysterious alien forces.
What I have neglected to mention thus far is that 2025’s War of the Worlds is told entirely through a computer screen. The film takes a page from the book of Searching by having the conflict, and all relevant drama, unfold via Zoom calls, social media platforms and governmental hacking software. It’s not an intrinsically bad way to tell a story – Searching, for example, is excellent. But unlike similar films, be it Unfriended or Language Lessons, where the themes and character dynamics are enhanced by this computer screen approach, War of the Worlds is a quintessentially bad fit for this format. It’s a transnational story about a global conflict, something that Zoom call filmmaking cannot articulately capture unless it’s in the vein of Cloverfield, which this film definitely isn’t. It’s a choice that inherently limits what the story can do.
Because we are forced to watch the film unfold via this format, director Rich Lee and team use news clips, CCTV and on-the-ground footage from Will’s smorgasbord of contacts to paint the picture of what’s going on outside the four corners of Will’s screen. This results in awful CGI smatterings of devastation and otherworldly technology. The iconic alien tripods look like something you’d see in an Asylum movie, while the erratic shaky cam used for the on-the-ground segments generates irritation over anxiety. The static interference utilised creates headaches rather than suspense, as the scattershot employment makes one feel as though the film is physically attacking them. Anytime the camera stabilises itself it’s to ensure the film can ram as much Amazon product placement into your face as possible. Not only is Faith’s boyfriend an Amazon delivery driver who wears the uniform throughout but Amazon gift cards are referenced everywhere. The climax genuinely hinges on whether or not an Amazon Prime Delivery Drone can evade the onslaught of alien hellfire being rained on the planet. I wish I was making this up.
This is not even mentioning the bizarre continuity issues – such as several days of alien invasion taking place in seemingly 90 minutes. Yet these are small chips compared to the dialogue. For a film that relies on the visual approach of screen-based storytelling there is so much telling over showing and often telling while showing. As Will is examining governmental programmes or searching for his kids, he explains what he’s doing out loud to no one else in the room. This is not only a redundant explanation since the visuals tell us already what we need to know, but it makes little sense given that Will has worked on this programme for years and thus should already know what they do. This is a recurring problem as characters state their feelings and dynamics with one another with no nuance, speaking like automatons rather than people. When the film swivels back to the drama, we’re treated to weightless soundbites as corny as they are redundant. “This is humanity’s last stand”, “Alright Disruptor, let’s disrupt some shit” and “Take your intergalactic asses back home” are but a few examples.
In fairness to the actors, Meryl Streep would struggle to sell any of this writing. That being said, the performances are collectively lifeless, including from certifiable talents like Clark Gregg and Eva Longoria. But none are as poor as Ice Cube, who has proven himself to have good comedic and dramatic chops in the past, be it 21 Jump Street or Boyz in the Hood. Here he seems completely uninterested, delivering what should be dramatic declarations of concern with all the enthusiasm of someone watching paint dry. Otherwise he’s effectively playing another variation of the angry dad stereotype, given the numerous exclamations of “damn” or “my God”. With so much of the film taking place via Zoom calls I’d believe you if you said Ice Cube literally phoned it in.
Taking even the amalgamation of all this leaves us with a bad, but mostly inept, picture. What slingshots the film into that special realm of atrocious is when the aliens’ motivations are uncovered. Their quest to conquer Earth is motivated by a hunger for data, with Will and his ragtag crew, including an Amazon driver, ensuring they will protect data from the invaders. There’s something uniquely tone deaf about a film playing on Prime and seemingly sponsored by Amazon, one of the planet’s biggest and greediest corporations with unhealthy amounts of access to our data, having the ultimate message be about protecting data from world-ending threats. It’s a cinematic circle jerk so disconnected from not just filmmaking competence but reality itself that it boggles the mind. It’s a lack of self-awareness and a level of self-aggrandising that only an evil trillion-dollar corporation is capable of. That the film looks like it was made with the budget of a shoebox becomes the least gross thing about it.
So many critics and audiences alike have bashed this film that adding to the dogpile with this review feels redundant. But War of the Worlds truly is a spectacular level of awful. This may well become a new Cats or Birdemic where one has to see it to believe it – something I urge against. Shoddily made, lazily acted and thoroughly misguided from the start, it’s an unneeded and unwanted adaptation of a timeless classic; a film so far removed from taste or basic skill that it becomes a thing of fascination in and of itself. If our data ever does become vulnerable to hungry aliens I suggest we offer them this film first to stave off their appetites.
War of the Worlds is streaming on Amazon Prime
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Director: Rich Lee
Writers: Kenneth A. Golde & Marc Hyman (based on War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells)
Stars: Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Iman Benson, Henry Hunter Hall
Runtime: 89 minutes
Country: USA
