War of the Worlds (2025) Is the Absolute Worst Alien Invasion Ever Filmed
Hello everyone. We need to talk about Amazon Prime Video’s latest War of the Worlds reboot, a cinematic dumpster fire so aggressively incompetent that it loops back around into unintentional comedy gold. It’s a screenlife movie – you know, those gimmicky “everything happens on the computer screen” films – except this time it’s on Windows, reeks of corporate synergy, and is hilariously bad in ways the filmmakers probably never intended.
The Screenlife Genre… Reduced to Microsoft Windows Hell
Let’s be clear: the screenlife genre had a decent run. A horror film wringing scares out of video chats? Fine. A mystery thriller tracking a missing daughter? Cool. But this? This is death by PowerPoint. We spend the majority of the film watching Ice Cube – playing DHS security expert William Radford – clicking through menus, right-clicking options, and violating every privacy law known to humankind while using the Department of Homeland Security’s all-seeing databases… to check if his daughter is eating enough protein. Yes, in the middle of a supposed alien invasion, we’re micromanaging fridge inventory. Riveting stuff.
Privacy Invasion as Parenting
Ice Cube can hack into any phone, camera, or drone in the United States… and uses it mostly to badger his grown kids. His daughter, a biologist who’s engineered a “cannibal virus” (don’t ask), gets scolded for her diet via WhatsApp. His son? Caught playing video games, and the parental solution is to remotely uninstall them so Junior can “focus on his studies.” Ah yes, the gamer’s equivalent of a lobotomy, performed not with a scalpel but a right-click and “Uninstall.” Somewhere, my inner healer is screaming “code blue” for this script.
Aliens, Hackers, and Data Munching
The actual plot – and I use the term with the same seriousness one might use for “flat-earther science” – involves Ice Cube hunting down “the Disruptor,” an anti-government hacker warning about a mysterious personal data repository called Goliath. This is briefly interrupted by meteors, which arrive without NASA apparently noticing, heralding aliens who… and I’m not joking… eat data. The script actually refers to it as “our most precious resource,” putting the sanctity of Instagram selfies on par with food, water, and oxygen.
When they start slurping information like it’s an all-you-can-eat cloud buffet, Ice Cube solemnly declares, “They’re in hyper download. They’re being emptied.” If you can get through that without laughing, you’re dead inside – or you’ve worked in government IT long enough that phrases like this feel plausible.
Product Placement: The True Invasion
I can handle a cameo from Zoom or WhatsApp for authenticity’s sake, but this is basically Amazon’s Avengers: Endgame of product placement. Ice Cube’s desktop is a museum of brand logos: Spotify, TeamViewer, GitHub, Steam… you name it. And the plot actively revolves around Amazon services – from a $1,000 gift card to a climax that’s literally an unboxing event for a USB drive delivered by Prime Air drone. Somewhere between the Bezos drone shot and the shameless Amazon worker fiancé subplot, I started wondering if this was secretly a recruitment video for gig economy jobs.
Performances That Hurt in All the Right (Wrong) Ways
Ice Cube behaves here like a man paid just enough to turn on the webcam but not enough to act like he believes in aliens. His “goddamn… oh, my god” reaction to extraterrestrials ranks just above “reading the wrong grocery list aloud” in emotional resonance. The rest of the cast oscillates between monotone exposition and blatant paycheck collection.
Accidental Comedy Masterpiece?
This is, without question, a terrible movie. But – and here’s the clinical diagnosis – it’s terrible in such a concentrated dose that it triggers the rare cinematic syndrome of “so bad it’s good.” If bad dialogue, absurd plot holes, and ham-fisted sponsorships amuse you, you could do far worse for ninety minutes. It’s the kind of experience where you start watching ironically and end up diagnosing the movie with terminal corporate cringe syndrome.
Final Prognosis
As a professional consumer of media nonsense, I’d say the movie functions best as a case study in failed IP reboots, naked brand integration, and how to make aliens less threatening than outdated antivirus software. If you’re looking for actual War of the Worlds dread, Spielberg’s 2005 version remains undefeated. If you want to witness Amazon accidentally roast itself on its own platform, grab some snacks (high in protein, per Ice Cube’s orders) and enjoy the implosion.
Verdict: Bad movie, great comedy – just not on purpose.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.
Source: The new War of the Worlds movie is even more terrible than you’ve heard but also hilarious, https://www.theverge.com/film/758158/war-of-the-worlds-2025-amazon-prime-video
