War of the Worlds (2025) Movie Review - Spoiler Free

Cheap, untalented filmmaking, with lacklustre performances, terrible computer graphics, generic music & no thrills whatsoever. This is the worst of 2025!

Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi / Thriller

Director: Rich Lee

Cast: Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Henry Hunter Hall, Iman Benson, Andrea Savage, Devon Bostock & Michael O’Neill.

Run Time: 89 min.

US Release: 30 July 2025 (Amazon Prime)

UK Release: 9 August 2025

German Release: 13 August 2025 (Amazon Prime)

Just when you think you have seen it all, Amazon comes around the corner with the biggest pile of shit imaginable. This crap popped up on my feed one eve, without me even knowing a new iteration of H.G. Wells' classic novel had been made - and starring Ice Cube? Unfortunately, this ain’t just bad, it is unwatchable! I mentally checked out after the first fifteen minutes, finding myself scrolling my phone every other minute, silently begging for time to pass faster. So, let's dive into the deepest of security levels to uncover the secret of how this Universal-Amazon coproduction became the biggest cinematic catastrophe of 2025 so far!

DHS officer Will Radfort is collaborating on a joint task force to take down a hacker, known only by his moniker “Disruptor”, when mysterious meteorites begin striking all over the planet. When giant machines start emerging from the rocks, a colossal invasion of Earth begins. Who are they, what do they want, and why could the US Government be involved in this? 

Sounds intriguing on paper, right? Well, don’t be fooled. The end product feels more like a stitched-together first draft of a rejected student project than a legitimate release.

To understand why it turned out this way, you need a bit of backstory. During the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, Kazakh-Russian producer Timur Bekmambetov pitched the idea of a screenlife, found-footage style sci-fi horror, something cheap and easy to film under quarantine regulations. The movie was shot in the short time span of fifteen days, with the director reportedly not even present. Post-production then dragged on for over two years, which only makes the final result more astonishingly poor. Honestly, it should have stayed locked in the vault.

Let’s be honest, calling this a “screenplay” feels generous. The script is practically non-existent: poorly structured, lazily written, plus packed with one of the dumbest conspiracy subplots I’ve ever seen, clumsily intertwined with the alien invasion. Every scene is exposition-heavy, with zero visual storytelling. 

Worse yet, it features some of the most blatant product placement I’ve ever witnessed. It’s not subtle;  it’s practically a feature-length Amazon commercial disguised as a movie. There’s nothing organic about it; every second shot features the company’s logo, delivery boxes, or digital services. The word “shameless” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Dialogues are equally abysmal; wooden, robotic, painfully unnatural. Every conversation sounds like it was written by a coked-up trained monkey using corporate PowerPoint slides. Instead of human emotions, audiences obtain endless exposition dumps.

The acting across the board is abysmal. It genuinely sounds as if no one wanted to be there. Ice Cube delivers what might be his worst performance to date: a flat, monotonous portrayal of Will Radfort, an unlikeable DHS agent who inexplicably uses government surveillance tools to spy on his children. There’s no depth, no charisma, and no attempt to make him relatable.

Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg are no better. Both deliver over-the-top, unintentionally hilarious performances, seemingly unsure whether they’re in a sci-fi thriller or a comedy. Their overly serious line deliveries, paired with absurd dialogue, make for some unintentionally cringy moments.

The camera work is a catastrophe! Rich Lee is a commercial and music video director, which absolutely shows. The screenlife gimmick is executed in the poorest of ways, even including some of the worst shaky-cam (through video calls) I have ever seen, turning the very few action segments unwatchable. Worst, the static camera limits audiences to a single computer screen. 

Rich Lee, who is primarily known for directing music videos and commercials, proves to be completely out of his depth here. His lack of cinematic storytelling experience shows in every scene. The so-called screenlife gimmick limits the entire movie to video calls, security feeds, and digital screens, which could have been an interesting creative choice. Instead, it’s executed in the laziest, most incoherent way possible, as scenes jump from static computer screens to shaky handheld footage that looks like it was recorded during a Zoom meeting.

The supposed “action” moments are so nauseatingly shot that they become literally unwatchable. The screenlife format isn’t immersive; it is claustrophobic, confusing, just like downright boring.

Then there are the effects... The CGI in War of the Worlds is nothing short of laughable. These visual atrocities look like they were ripped out of an early '90s PC game. The alien machines look unfinished and are badly integrated into the already brainless narrative, making it impossible to suspend disbelief for even a second.

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Verdict: This is a new milestone in terrible filmmaking! Timur Bekmambetov saw an opportunity to create the cheapest of features in the midst of a pandemic and cash in on it. Studios jumped on the train, with Amazon seizing the opportunity to implement blatant product placement. The original War of the Worlds is a story about human fragility, thou also about its resilience to stand up against cosmic terrors. This version, however, has nothing in common with H.G. Wells’ classic sci-fi tale. With a horrible performance by Ice Cube, the laziest of incoherent narratives, as well as appalling cinematography, ugly VFX’s and no sense of aesthetics whatsoever, this is a contender for worst flick of the year! No tension, no horror, no suspense. 2025’s version of War of the Worlds is dogshit, deserving the lowest of grades - 1.0 out of 10. 

Don’t watch it, don’t even acknowledge it! Watching paint dry is a better use of time than sitting through this & Amazon should be ashamed for having it on their platform!