If H. G. Wells could see what they've done to War of the Worlds, he'd crawl out of his grave, seize the nearest webcam, and apologise personally to every viewer. This 2025 remake isn't a film-it's a cry for help wrapped in a Teams call, sprinkled with alien noises, and served lukewarm via a Prime subscription you forgot to cancel.
Let's start with the aesthetic. Imagine if a GCSE media class was told to make a sci-fi film using only screenshots, bad Wi-Fi, and a laptop with 2% battery. Now remove all humour, tension, and character development-and give Ice Cube a webcam and a plot he clearly didn't read. Voilà! You have War of the Worlds: 2025.
The filmmakers-visionaries, I presume-have boldly decided to tell this epic tale almost entirely through video calls, file searches, and screen recordings. Because nothing screams cinema like watching a grown man mutter "Can you hear me now?" while an alien invasion supposedly unfolds offscreen. Hitchcock used suspense. Spielberg used wonder. This uses desktop notifications.
Ice Cube stars as a sort of cyber-survivalist dad with the emotional range of a fax machine. He spends most of the film yelling into various devices, occasionally squinting at an alien threat that we're told is terrifying but which mostly looks like a Windows 98 screensaver gone rogue. I kept waiting for him to say, "Alexa, save humanity," but alas, even that would've been too engaging.
Eva Longoria phones it in-literally. Her performance is 40% lag, 60% existential regret. You can actually see the exact moment she realises she's trapped in a movie that feels like it was directed by Clippy, the old Microsoft Word assistant: "It looks like you're trying to make a sci-fi film. Would you like some help?"
Plot-wise? Picture a disaster movie written by ChatGPT after one too many espressos and a broken caps lock key. The story unfolds (or rather, oozes) through dialogue that sounds like it was ripped from corporate training videos: "We have to initiate the data protocol!" "Reboot the firewall!" "Send the drone!" I kept expecting someone to share their screen and walk us through a pivot table.
Then, just when you think it can't get any worse, the film goes full infomercial: a literal Amazon Prime delivery drone becomes a crucial plot device. I swear on Spielberg's beard. The world is ending, and the hero has to buy a gadget on Prime to fix it. I half-expected a pop-up: "Customers who bought this item also saved civilisation."
To be fair, a few reviewers online called it "underrated" and "thought-provoking." I can only assume they were bots, bored interns, or sentient toasters trying to assimilate into human culture by watching the worst we have to offer.
Watching this film felt like being slowly strangled by ethernet cables while Clippy cheers you on. It's not just a bad film-it's a philosophical event. A meditation on the futility of time, money, and broadband. A reminder that just because you can make a movie entirely on Zoom... doesn't mean you should.
Final verdict:
If you've ever wanted to experience what it's like to die of secondhand embarrassment while waiting for a buffering screen to load the apocalypse, War of the Worlds (2025) is your masterpiece. For everyone else, I recommend looking at a turned-off TV for 90 minutes. More tension, better acting.
