I’ve watched a lot of crappy movies this year. While the 2025 movie schedule has given us some unforgettable flicks we’ll be talking about for years to come, there’s also been a lot of garbage. War of the Worlds, the latest and possibly strangest adaptation of H.G. Wells’ iconic sci-fi novel about aliens invading Earth, might be the worst movie I’ve seen all year. However, though the movie feels like a 90-minute ad for an Amazon subscription (a membership is required to watch it, by the way), I think I actually like it in a weird way.
Yeah, the movie is schlocky, flat, filled with more plot holes than Amazon references, and features too many death fake-outs to count, but I can’t sit here and say I didn’t enjoy myself watching Ice Cube take on alien forces from behind a computer screen. Hear me out!
This Movie Is Objectively Bad, But I Couldn't Stop Watching
There is a shot in the War of the Worlds trailer with a block of text reading “It’s worse than you think,” and they’re not kidding. This is one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched, and that’s coming from a guy who was once part of a group called “The Shitty Movie Crew,” where we’d watch gems like Transmorphers and Slappy and the Stinkers. Even without the constant barrage of Amazon product placements used to propel the plot, this movie sucks. However, I couldn’t stop watching.
Sure, it could have been the whole “trainwreck” quality of the movie where I wanted to see, with a morbid curiosity, just how bad things would get, but at no point did the movie lose my attention or make me pause to see how much was left. Even after all the fake death scenes (seriously, all the main characters have at least one), terrible line-readings, and pure insanity, I just couldn’t get enough.
It Has A Cheesy FMV Computer Game From The '90s Vibe, But It Works
Unlike pretty much every other film or TV adaptation of War of the Worlds, this latest version is pretty much a computer screen movie, with everything being seen through the computer of Ice Cube’s character, DHS surveillance expert Will Radford. Whether he’s spying on his kids (played by Henry Hunter Hall and Iman Benson) or speaking with other government officials (played by Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg), Radford is always seen through his computer screen.
This creates a campy and cheesy effect that looks like something out of a bad FMV computer game in the ‘90s, where you watch terrible cutscenes before solving various puzzles. It's not good and looks awful at times, but it added a certain charm to the experience.
However, The Amazon Product Placement Is A Bit Much
I am a forgiving man. I can overlook the phoned-in performances, I can handle the obvious plot holes and things that don’t make sense, and I can forgive the cheesy computer-generated visual effects found throughout War of the Worlds, but what I can’t handle are all the product placements for Amazon services that take over the final act.
They are few and far between in the beginning (talk of spying on people’s Amazon carts, a supporting character is a Prime delivery driver, etc.), but by the end of the movie, things go to a ridiculous level. I won’t spoil everything for those who haven’t seen it yet, but Amazon’s Prime Air (a drone delivery service) plays a major role in the fight to save humanity. I think I can feel the collective groan from everyone who’s watched so far.
Again, I don’t think War of the Worlds is a good movie; far from it. But I can’t sit here and act like I didn’t have a good time watching this utterly absurd retelling of one of the best sci-fi stories of all time.
