Directed By Rich Lee

Starring – Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Iman Benson

The Plot – A grounded sci-fi film in the vein of “District 9”, that touches on themes of privacy versus surveillance

Rated PG-13 for some sci-fi action/violence, strong adult language and bloody images.

WAR OF THE WORLDS Official Trailer (2025)

POSITIVES

The optimist in me who stays away from the vitriolic hyperbole of other critics in order to brandish review views, spots a couple of noteworthy instances in the production of the film to keep it from being among the worst movie of the year, beginning with the intricacies of the movie’s sound design, which are actually quite effective at articulating insight into settings that we the audience have limited access to. To the untrained ear, the schemes within the various environments might seem like they’re overlapping one another, in ways that feel artistically compromising to effectively decipher, but in reality the combination of alien machinery, on-ground devastation, and Jon Natchez’s emotionally enveloping score, gives these sequences the levels of underlining intensity that they need to override the complete lack of suspense from the screenplay and Lee’s direction, in turn cementing the lone credible effort for the film that at least kept me faithfully invested to urgency of the established conflict, while feeling a step above every other element of production that is continuously working against it. In addition to this, the only other credit that I can muster for this movie is in the contemporary rendering of its alien-invading H.G Wells plot that at least on the surface conjures a fascinating idea pertaining to technological advancements and countersurveillance. While the execution definitely leaves more to be desired to both the characterization and developments of the conflict, the motivation of these aliens are firmly established in ways that justify the extent of their devastation, and perhaps with a better director and bigger budget at its helm, the idea of portraying this from a desktop perspective could’ve provided a found footage freneticism of sorts to the air of the filmmaking that could’ve appraised something uniquely compelling to such a classic narrative.

NEGATIVES

When a movie is made and then sat on a shelf for five years, it’s never for a good reason, and though 2020 limited the capabilities of effectively making an entertaining film for at-home audiences, “War of the Worlds” is proof that the time of these filmmakers would’ve been better spent taking their time to make something culturally endearing, especially with so much evidence to an inferior product that is continuously apparent in the production’s orchestration. From a storytelling perspective, the footnotes in the narrative are not only unfocused in the shared time between the alien invasion and a surmising anti-government subplot, creating no shortage of plot holes and contrivances in their wake, but also abruptly rushed throughout the air of its various developments, which shoehorns what feels like two hours of exposition into an engagement that doesn’t persist long enough to leave a lasting memory. On the subject of that exposition, Cube’s character is reduced to narrating the film while looking at a computer screen in ways that leaves absolutely nothing of subtlety to the interpretation, with echoed repetition in the dialogue, in case you missed anything that he said the first time. It’s distracting enough to emphasize what’s transpiring through the condensed captivity of a computer screen, but it’s made all the more meandering when the consistency of the conversations are about as obvious and on-the-nose as artificial-intelligence summaries, with nothing in the depths of realism or naturalism to the appeal of the deliveries or the actions of the characters, which is among the many obstacles you face in attaching to a single one of them. Speaking of artificial intelligence, what little on-ground action that we do get throughout the engagement, we receive these horribly rendered spurts of A.I imagery that looks like they were manufactured by Windows 98 software, with intentionally low-grading resolutions to hide some of the more obvious traits of their artificiality. Part of me can empathize with a production featuring such an evidentially minimized budget that is executed on-screen, but the other half of me feels that alien invasion films can’t be properly mustered if they’re not given the proper tools visually to sell their lethal devastation, and considering the scope of the picture feels condensed in community in everything from the desktop perspectives, to the news briefings of everything going on in just this community, the movie never rises to the urgency and bleakness of previous “War of the Worlds” films that thrived on the helpless vulnerabilities of its human protagonists, in turn appraising these laughably bad special effects that constantly outline its budgetary limitations, instead of its captivating capabilities. As for those characters and the performances that spring from them, Cube’s William Radford is about as unappealing of a protagonist that we’ve gotten this year, or even 2020, where the movie originally emanated from, as a result of the coldly dismissive interactions that he shares with his children, and while these feelings could be effortlessly eased by a stimulating turn from Cube at its helm, it’s instead deduced even further by a lack of energy and commitment to deliveries that proves his one-dimensionality when it comes to cinematic opportunities. Cube here combines the thrill of listening to characters so obviously and monotonously reading a computer screen with the unpredictability of continuously mean-mugging a camera, and it not only makes the character a tediously unlikable presence, particularly in advocating for unapproved surveillance methods on American citizens, but also dramatically underscores the magnitude of the stakes within the third act climax, where I truly didn’t care about anything going on, as a result of the lack of emotional compass that Cube and his surrounding ensemble prescribe the film. What’s sad is the movie features film veterans like Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, or Michael O’Neill, yet can’t assemble any semblance of magnetism and presence to make any of their work integrally commendable, and while I can understand that opportunities were certainly limited in 2020, the phoned-in emphasis from their various deliveries conveys a complete lack of commitment and effort that transpires reflectively in the execution of the film, leaving so many of the film’s foundational scenes flatlined by bouts of unremarkable work that undeniably serve as career-worsts for those involved. Finally, one of my least favorite movie tropes finds its way shamelessly into the creativity of the movie, making this feel like one big commercial for the Amazon Prime brand, as the movie repeatedly mentions it audibly and visually in ways that are anything but subtle. Considering this film is produced and shown exclusively on the Amazon Prime streaming service, the intention of its usage feels about as desperately obvious and tasteless as an American president hawking his own brand of presidential merchandise, conveying the movie’s obvious attempts at commercialism in ways that are now sadly bleeding into the sacred ground of cinematic escapism.

OVERALL
“War of the Worlds” is a thinly written and cheaply manufactured commercial adaptation of the popular H.G Wells alien-invasion story of the same name, told entirely through desktop perspectives that not only hinders our connective accessibility to the developing plot, but also levels emotionality when experienced through uninteresting or unlikeable characters who serve as a humanity’s last stand into a hostile takeover. While the appeal in possibility is clearly evident in a completely fresh take on a decades old story, Rich Lee never surmises any semblance of palpable tension or thematic substance to grow the narrative along naturally, instead settling for the kinds of obviously-intentioned spurts of dialogue that makes this the perfect movie to have on in the background, while you ignore it with other household chores.

My Grade: 2.4 or F