By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 second ago

The reason movies like Castaway (2000) and The Martian (2015) are such compelling watches is because it’s so fun to watch smart people solve problems. It’s the kind of wish fulfillment that makes sense to me on a molecular level. I worked as a corporate office drone in a previous professional life, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that about 80 percent of people are terrible at their jobs. When you run into somebody who can effortlessly navigate proprietary software without a moment of hesitation, it’s a borderline erotic experience.

That is all to say that when I fired up 2025’s War of the Worlds on Amazon Prime Video, despite the many warnings from my friends and loved ones, I actually felt hopeful that it wouldn’t be as terrible as its 4 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes made it out to be. I’m a strong advocate of giving misunderstood films a second chance, and War of the Worlds has that “damn, he’s good” element that I have so much fun tagging along for.

Truth be told, if Ice Cube released a three-hour film of him just performing data entry at a high level, I’d buy it on Blu-ray. He’s just a smart guy solving problems, and the way he navigates the many computer systems and networks at his disposal is straight-up poetry in wide-rimmed glasses.

The problem with War of the Worlds, though, isn’t Ice Cube’s, or anybody else’s performance for that matter. It’s the whole damn movie.

War of the Worlds plays out like 2014’s Open Windows, written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, and starring Elijah Wood and Sasha Grey. Both films are screenlife thrillers, meaning we’re watching the entire film through devices in found footage-fashion. Where Open Windows succeeds, however, War of the Worlds fails miserably.

Open Windows stays enthralling because there are few characters, a very localized conspiracy, and a level of second-hand suspense generated through its voyeuristic framework. War of the Worlds takes place in the middle of a worldwide alien invasion, and it somehow feels like the stakes are lower. This could just be a genre limitation, but the whole screenlife and found footage approach seems to work much better on a micro level than a macro one.

The plot itself is rough, but there’s actually room for interesting storytelling here, which is why War of the Worlds is such a tough pill to swallow. Most of the story is told from Will Radford’s (Ice Cube) perspective. He’s a high-level employee working for the Department of Homeland Security, and he has remote access to surveillance software that allows him to watch just about anyone in excruciating detail.

One thing that I loved about this movie, not even kidding, is how good Will is at his job while also being a working-class, widowed father. He uses the technology at his disposal to keep tabs on his pregnant daughter Faith (Iman Benson), his conspiracy-theory-obsessed son Dave (Henry Hunter Hall), and Mark Goodman (Devon Bosick), Faith’s boyfriend and an Amazon delivery driver. One thing that feels realistic about Will’s position is that he’s constantly spying on his children, not out of malice, but because after his wife passed away he started overcompensating by making sure everybody else in his family is safe.

To me, this is the real story that needs to be told, and you don’t need to make H.G. Wells spin in his grave by violating his legacy one crappy CGI alien tripod at a time. As Will deals with family drama, he’s switching tabs, cracking passwords, accessing surveillance cameras, and killing it at his job tracking down hackers and cyber threats. I cannot stress this enough, I love watching Ice Cube navigate his elaborate setup with the grace of a gold medal figure skater, staring his family down through FaceTime with looks of stern bewilderment when he learns what his kids are up to when they think they’re not being watched.

Oh Yeah, This Is A Movie About Aliens

But therein lies the problem with War of the Worlds. The family drama is the more compelling story, and the alien invasion feels like an afterthought. Circling back to my Open Windows comparison, it’s hard to feel any emotional weight in Will’s exchanges with his family because it’s all done through screens. It’s sad to think that this is how we interact these days, and how Amazon, which distributes this movie, is partially responsible for the unhealthy relationship we have with our devices.

The world is literally ending, but we’re witnessing it through screens, as Ice Cube watches it through screens while FaceTiming everybody through their screens. It’s not even second-hand suspense. It’s tertiary, buried under multiple layers of abstraction that prevent you from feeling anything at all.

Had this production ditched the H.G. Wells connection entirely, and been, say, a hostage situation involving Will’s family, this whole thing could have had legs.

War of the Worlds Is Streaming On Amazon (They’re Totally A Real Company, Did You Know?!)

Speaking of Amazon, War of the Worlds, which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, has a lot of product placement. There’s an entire sequence involving Mark, an Amazon driver, using an Amazon delivery drone to get a flash drive to Will so he can save the world. Thank God we now know Amazon is a real brand with real products and delivery services, because while I streamed this movie on Amazon, I had no idea I was only two clicks away from getting toiletries delivered to my doorstep, and three syllables away from Alexa listening to everything I say when I think I’m alone. Amazon!

Even if you get past the blatant product placement, War of the Worlds has an even more chilling implication. Will can access almost anything he wants through his DHS setup. He calls a Tesla to pick up his injured daughter, cranks the air conditioning when she complains about the heat, notices her phone battery is critically low, and remotely switches it to power-saving mode. This is framed as heroic, but it also suggests that all of our devices are capable of being controlled by people watching our every move.

I don’t know what to make of this, because unlike 2008’s The Dark Knight, there are no moral dilemmas here. At least Batman tried to justify turning Gotham into a surveillance state, even though he knew how dangerous of a precedent it would set, to catch somebody who had already caused irreversible damage to his community. In War of the Worlds, it almost feels like they’re trying to normalize this level of control, as if writers Kenneth A. Golde and Mark Hyman skimmed through 1984 and said, “Oh, this is GREAT!”

Did I mention that Amazon Prime is a real thing you can sign up for for the nominal fee of $14.99 a month? The membership practically pays for itself in saved shipping costs. Amazon. Wow.

Listen, War of the Worlds is trash. It’s not good. It aspires to be crappy. But I will say this: Ice Cube fiddling around on a computer is weirdly soothing to watch, and the second he launches a data entry ASMR channel on YouTube, I’ll be there.

War of the Worlds is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.