Occasionally you’ll come across a movie so good that you can’t imagine anything coming close to it. That’s kind of what we have here, except War of the Worlds is so bad I can’t see anything stooping this low for years to come. Presented entirely through a computer screen, this experimental adaptation follows one family’s efforts to thwart a global alien invasion.
First thing’s first – they can go ahead and call this movie “War of the Worlds” all they like, but the fact of the matter is the only similarity it shares is that aliens are attacking Earth. This is a sad excuse for a movie let alone a WotW adaptation. I find it hard to believe anyone looked at this edit and thought it was good to push out. The dedication to the computer screen presentation isn’t the issue – Searching (2018) managed to create great tension via that approach – it’s the complete lack of effort in the narrative, performances, editing, visuals and every other creative department that makes this an absolute atrocity. Basically every element that makes a movie a movie is woefully executed, resulting in an end product with not a redeemable quality in sight.
The narrative itself is vague, uninspired, repetitive and full of lazily-written cliches that make this an absolute bore. When it comes to the alien invasion portion of the story, the writers try to instill a sense of mystery regarding “why” they’re here and what their goal is. It also moves at a blistering pace, frantically throwing every piece of information your way while not giving you a reason to retain any of it. Despite being so frantic, this is somehow also the longest 90 minutes I’ve ever had to sit through.
The film’s failure comes in two waves – first, there’s no real urgency, stakes or suspense conveyed to get you hooked, then second, the answers it dishes out are so nonsensical and unclear that it only leaves you more confused. We can see that the Earth is under attack and cities are being decimated, but it isn’t felt because there’s no emotional connection to any of the characters involved. That brings us to the smaller, family-focused portion of the story that tries to get us invested in the lives of the Radford family. Any attempt to create an interesting character for us to care about is hindered by the performances, script and presentation. The only attempts at forming an emotional bond are via facetime calls where it’s clear the actors aren’t communicating live, or through Ice Cube browsing Facebook. These actors are reacting to nothing in front of a green screen, which just rips you out of every potentially engaging moment. The biggest ploy to draw any sort of emotion is to have a major death fake-out… but they do this more times than I can count so it loses all impact.
Speaking of the actors, I need to highlight Ice Cube as it’s his face that’s on screen 99% of the time. I generally like Cube as an actor, but he’s been done dirty by this entire film. That being said, he took on this role himself… unless he was being held at gunpoint, which I’d actually believe. To put it simply, watching Cube navigate this script is like watching someone learn how to speak for the first time. Not only is it certainly the first time he’s seeing every line of dialogue, but he’s also not being told exactly what he’s supposed to be reacting to. That last point falls on the director – I don’t think he’s being effectively directed on what his character is going through at every moment. His reactions don’t match the weight of what he’s supposed to be seeing – a city will be getting decimated or his child might have just died in an explosion, yet he’s reacting like he’s watching viral TikToks. His delivery is half-assed and reflects the fact that he doesn’t want to be there.
We also have the likes of Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg being dragged into this project, and they also can’t break through the script’s shortcomings. I understand the limitations presented by this film being shot during Covid, but the lack of any in-person character interaction means all we can do is watch actors mumble through lines that are stitched together to form conversations.
While this project fails at being a movie, it unfortunately succeeds in being an insufferable 90-minute advertisement for Amazon. The sickening product placement of Amazon branding, products and services is enough to have H. G. Wells turning in his grave. From one character being an Amazon delivery driver to bribing a homeless man with an Amazon gift card, all the way to watching Ice Cube go through the entire Amazon checkout process then watching a Prime Air delivery be fulfilled, it’s honestly embarrassing. More effort has been placed in figuring how to weave this product placement into the film than actually crafting a compelling story and characters.
In the end, War of the Worlds has cemented itself not only as the worst film of the year, but also one of the worst of all time. It offers nothing in the way of entertainment and is not even one of those ‘so bad it’s good’ movies. There are moments where it had me laughing, but as I was laughing at it not with it I can’t score it for that. It’s led by an abysmal Ice Cube performance that’s becoming memorable for all the wrong reasons. Any consolation score below is given because while horrible in judgement and execution, the commitment to sticking to its computer-based setting so faithfully is something. All this film does is make you appreciate every other bad movie a little more… because at least it’s not this bad.
0.5/10
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