War of the Worlds (2025) Review: So Bad It Makes You Miss Zoom Meetings

This version of H.G. Wells’ classic 1898 novel was directed by Rich Lee, written by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman, and starred Ice Cube and Eva Longoria in the main roles. It was released by Universal Pictures on Amazon Prime Video.

The film follows Will (Ice Cube), an ordinary man trying to protect his family during an alien invasion. He is also a U.S. homeland security analyst overseeing the Goliath program, a system that monitors everyone and everything, capable of listening to phone calls, checking what you are playing on Steam, and even deleting the game (?).

Will spends his days stuck on video calls, trying to prevent national security threats, until his screen becomes the stage for a global catastrophe. But instead of giant tripods destroying cities, the enemies here are aliens that attack networks. They feed on data.

The entire narrative unfolds in a “screenlife” format, meaning everything happens through a computer screen: video calls, notifications, pop-ups, and so on. It is clearly inspired by films like the excellent Searching.

That is how we follow Will interacting with coworkers, government authorities, and his own family, with whom he has a controlling relationship, as the world collapses around them.

Production began in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, when social isolation was at its peak. In theory, it was a good idea: being confined in a kind of bunker while watching the world fall apart, with friends and family trapped outside.

On paper, the idea sounded promising. Reimagining The War of the Worlds in the 21st century had potential. Replacing death rays with digital attacks and showing aliens exploiting humanity’s technological dependence could have been bold in full Black Mirror style. There was even room to critique corporate power over our lives.

The premise was good. The problem was the execution.

This is where everything collapses, from the choice of Ice Cube as the lead, with his complete lack of facial expressions, to the dreadful editing.

Incoherent Plot and Cringe-Worthy Dialogue

With incoherent and often cringe-worthy dialogue, the film gives us data-hungry aliens, teenage hackers, and Microsoft as humanity’s savior. If the script had been written by Lex Luthor’s monkeys from James Gunn’s Superman, it might have turned out better.

The way Will discovers a hacker’s physical address is so ridiculously easy it would make any IT professional cry.

The lines are embarrassing, provoking more secondhand laughter than narrative sense, like Will’s quips and one-liners during catastrophic moments when the world is in chaos.

The lack of believability is glaring, preventing us from taking this scenario seriously. Absurd situations abound: A NASA scientist makes first contact with a meteor or UFO that just crashed, without research, safe distance, protective gear, or even gloves. Or a prize-winning biologist who does not know that no doctor would recommend pulling a shard of metal from a wound because of the risk of massive bleeding.

The timeline is so messy that while a global decision to go on the offensive against the invaders is made, every world government unites their armies and launches a counterattack. Something that would take days to coordinate happens instantly. Meanwhile, Will’s daughter is trapped in rubble with an injured leg, waiting for him to rescue her with a Tesla.

We are left wondering if she stayed there for days, or if the world is moving in fast-forward with armies mobilizing in minutes while Will’s daughter waits for help in a conveniently hackable Tesla.

I doubt Tesla owners, or the company itself, appreciated their cars being shown as so easy to hack.

And then there is the predictable plot twist that surprises absolutely no one. It shows up at the very beginning, and you do not need to be a narrative expert to see it coming. Still, it is worth a laugh at the end when Will steals someone else’s work and takes full credit for it.

Excessive “Screenlife” Format

Telling the entire story through a computer screen could have worked with sharp editing and good pacing. Here, it becomes torture: two hours of video calls, endless notifications, and pop-ups. Constant zoom-ins on faces.

The editing goes overboard with overlapping windows, leaving no breathing room. What should have been a dynamic format becomes suffocating, like browsing a webpage flooded with flashing spam ads. It is unpleasant to watch.

Mediocre CGI

The excuse could be that the alien footage looks bad because it is supposedly recorded on phones in real time. But in 2025, with phones capable of filming in 8K, there is no justification for effects this poor.

Sure, maybe the budget was not high, but making it look like a generic 1990s B-movie is really pushing the audience’s patience.

Ice Cube... literally an Ice Cube

If Ice Cube has charisma, it does not show here. His character is just a controlling widowed father who even checks his daughter’s fridge to monitor her calorie intake. That is the peak of his “apathetic parenting” development.

Ice also seems to think that peak acting during moments demanding extreme emotion means a frozen stare and an open mouth. Maybe add an “Oh my God!” after a friend explodes on live video, with the camera zooming closer at every syllable.

Seriously, someone give him a Razzie trophy already.

Shameless Product Placement

We know the film was produced by Amazon Prime in collaboration with Microsoft, but do we really need immersion-breaking reminders every five minutes?

It feels like the real invader is not the aliens but Amazon itself. Heroic drones, logos plastered across the screen, delivery services that do not stop even at the end of the world. The company does not just fund the movie, it wants to be the hero of it.

For these and many other reasons, too many to list here, critics absolutely tore apart War of the Worlds 2025.

The film quickly landed in rankings of the 100 worst movies ever made. The New York Post called it “one of the worst of the decade,” Wired described it as “advertising disguised as cinema,” and even kinder critics said it was “laughable, incoherent, and embarrassing.”

On Rotten Tomatoes, it debuted with a 0% critics’ score. As more reviews came in, that number climbed slightly to 3%.

Audience scores were a little better, starting around 12% and reaching 22%.

Many may wonder why such a terrible, critically destroyed movie managed to rank among the top 10 most watched. The answer is simple.

It became a collective trash-cinema event. People are not watching it because it is good. They are watching because it is absurd, everyone is talking about it, and its very failure turned it into a bizarre attraction.

This is what happens when the internet declares a movie one of the worst ever. People get curious and watch just to see for themselves. It is the classic meme effect, watching firsthand just to laugh about it online.

We also cannot forget Amazon’s heavy-handed promotion with banners, trailers, and homepage highlights. Being an in-house Amazon production, it came with a spotlight guaranteed.

If you are bored, in the mood for secondhand embarrassment, anger, wasted time, and want nothing of value from the experience, then yes.

Otherwise, save your eyes and brain from this disaster. You are better off with Spielberg’s 2005 version, which many dislike but is still far better.

Or the 1953 version, which was inducted into the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Hall of Fame in 1978, praised by critics as an excellent production, and still holds 89% critical approval and 71% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

So tell me, are you the type who watches just to say how bad it is, or do you prefer to spend your time on something of higher quality? Let us know in the comments.