War of the Worlds (2025)
½ — War of the Worlds (2025)
I don't know where to begin. I genuinely don't. And I've sat here for a while trying to find the right entry point into whatever this thing is, because calling it a film feels like a kindness it hasn't earned.
War of the Worlds (2025) is one of the most baffling viewing experiences I've ever had. Not bad in the way that makes you groan and move on. Bad in the way that makes you sit up straight, squint at the screen, and ask yourself whether you're being pranked. Whether someone, somewhere, is laughing. Whether this is all somehow intentional. I still don't have a clean answer to any of those questions, and that might be the most unsettling thing about it.
The premise, such as it is, puts Ice Cube in the role of a retired marine turned conspiracy podcaster facing an alien invasion. On paper, there's something almost interesting in that setup. A man who's spent years warning people about threats nobody believed in, suddenly proven right in the most catastrophic way possible. You could do something with that. This film does absolutely nothing with it. Ice Cube delivers his lines with the energy of a man reading a PowerPoint presentation to an empty conference room, and I say that without cruelty, because I genuinely think the material gave him nothing to work with. His character rants into a webcam while stock footage of cities in flames flickers in the corner of the frame like a broken news ticker. That's the film. That's the action.
The visuals are, and I want to be precise here, laughable. The alien ships look like spinning disco balls rendered in Microsoft Paint. Explosions happen behind characters who don't react to them in real time. Backgrounds flicker. Lighting shifts between shots in ways that suggest the scenes weren't just filmed separately, but possibly on different days, in different rooms, by different people who never spoke to each other. The whole thing has the texture of a Zoom call recorded in someone's basement, and not even a particularly well-lit basement.
There's a moment, and I promise I am not making this up, where a character says "I'll order more ammo on Prime." On Prime. In an Amazon Prime exclusive release. That line exists. It was written, approved, performed, recorded, edited in, and released to the public. Make of that what you will.
Which brings me to the question I keep circling back to: is this incompetence, or is it cynicism? Is this a production that genuinely tried and catastrophically failed, or is it a piece of content deliberately engineered to be mocked, shared, and streamed out of sheer disbelief? Given the platform and the product placement, I strongly suspect the latter. This feels less like a film and more like an algorithm wearing a film's clothes, designed to trend on TikTok for a week before disappearing. The "so bad it's good" pipeline as a business model.
I love Ice Cube. I think Friday (1995) is a genuine comedy classic, and his dramatic work in Boyz n the Hood (1991) is quietly excellent. Watching him here is genuinely painful, not because he embarrasses himself exactly, but because the gap between what he's capable of and what he's been handed is so enormous it becomes its own kind of tragedy.
There's no story here. No stakes. No logic. No sense that anyone behind the camera asked the question "does this work?" at any point in production. I've seen low-budget science fiction that used its limitations creatively, that found ways to make you feel the scale of something vast and threatening with very little money. This film had a budget and a major streaming platform behind it, and still managed to feel cheaper than things made for a fraction of the cost.
Half a star, and that half is awarded purely because it exists as a complete object, a beginning, middle and end were technically assembled. Beyond that, I've got nothing. It's not offensive. It's not harmful. It's something almost worse: it's cinema giving up. Waving a white flag and dressing the surrender in alien ships and Prime delivery jokes. I've never seen anything quite like it, and I'm praying, sincerely, that I never will again.
Rating: ½ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2025-08-09
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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