It’s official, at this point, War of the Worlds has gone from a bad movie to a movie that’s so bad, you must actually recommend people watch it because it is in fact, the good kind of bad.
The 11th or so War of the Worlds adaptation based on the 130-year-old HG Wells story is an affront to that work, to sci-fi, to movies in general and to the intelligence of audiences. I maintain this was all on purpose, that Amazon and this cast knew what they were doing with this, but if not, that makes it even funnier.
The movie has security surveillance expert Ice Cube attempting to track a hacker and spy on his kids when suddenly, there’s an alien invasion. He continues to track the hacker and spy on his kids as all this is happening, occasionally punctuating things with an “oh shit!” or “this is terrible” as he watches aliens take over the planet.
All of this takes place on Ice Cube’s computer screen, or often Microsoft Zoom meetings or Ice Cube’s webcam that show his hilarious reactions to everything going on. There is also an explanation as to why he is not leaving his computer during an entire alien invasion, as there is, of course, a “lockdown,” preventing a man who can hack everything on earth from leaving the building.
War of the Worlds
Rotten Tomatoes
The special effects are bargain basement. The rest of the cast, which does include recognizable faces like Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg, are phoning it in to such a degree that again, I have to believe this is on purpose. Everyone in the film makes the worst possible decisions at any given moment, and in between those entertaining scenes, at least 30% of the movie appears to be product placement for a number of tech brands, most of all Amazon, where the company actually becomes crucial to the plot by the end in ways I do not possibly want to spoil here. You must see it for yourself.
There was something of a dust-up the other day when finally, a single critic gave it a positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. While that may seem insane, I can understand this from an “entertainment” perspective, given how much you will be laughing throughout. But of course yes, it’s explicitly awful.
There have been claims that War of the Worlds is one of the worst movies of all time. Or at least in the entire lifetime of a viewer. Both of these are accurate. It’s being compared to The Room, the horrific Tommy Wiseau feature that became a cult classic, and I think that’s what we’re seeing here, only with actors we recognize like Ice Cube and Longoria.
I have to know what happened here, and I’m hoping there will soon be a deep dive into how this movie was conceived of, filmed and released, or else it will remain one of cinema’s biggest mysteries as to how this possibly happened.
I absolutely recommend it, so long as you know what you’re getting into. Watch it with open-minded friends.
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