This, the latest cinematic iteration of H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898), has already attained legendary status—and not because it’s good. Co-produced by NIGHT WATCH’s Timur Bekmambetov and starring Ice Cube, it was filmed in 2020 but went unreleased until July 2025.
WAR OF THE WORLDS (2025) Trailer
Among the critical notices the film received were “A Dull Invasion of Mediocrity,” “Everyone involved in this should be on trial in the Hague,” “The best actors in the film were the aliens,” etc. Myself, I found that the opening CLOVERFIELD-like hour delivers some trashy fun, but the last thirty minutes, in which the film deviates mightily from Wells’ story, are a bust.
As was the case with many pandemic made films, this WAR OF THE WORLDS takes the form of a console set thriller in which the performers interact from different locations. William Radford (Cube), a Domestic Terror Analyst, is seen on his desktop computer in Washington, DC. A succession of windows on his monitor put him in touch with NASA scientist Sandra Sales (Eva Longoria), NSA director Donald Briggs (Clark Gregg), Radford’s twentyish kids Faith (Iman Benson) and David (Henry Hunter Hall), Faith’s Amazon employed boyfriend Mark Goodman (Devon Bostick) and FBI field agent Sheila Jeffries (Andrea Savage). She’s trying to take down a hacker known as Disruptor, but in the middle of an attempted raid meteors hit cities around the world.
This throws everything into turmoil as Radford hacks into security cameras, texts his loved ones and confers with his colleagues. The meteor strikes leave behind large boulders that break open and disgorge machines that shoot laser beams capable of destroying everything in sight, and before long the whole world is blacked out (except of course for the structures housing Radford and his contacts). How to stop the aliens? It has something to do with insect-like bots that consume computer data and the mega-virus unleashed by Disruptor, who turns out to have a rather intimate connection with Radford…but by that point I’d long since lost interest.
This film suffers from the same problem that underlies every attempt at modernizing H.G. Wells’ classic: it tries to add a contemporary angle to a hopelessly archaic story. Many of Wells’ hoarier conceptions, such as the three-legged alien battle bots (the flying discs that replaced them in the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS worked far better), are retained, with a cyberpunk overlay that seems passable at first. Obviously, the computer screen gambit is no longer as innovative as it once was, and nor is the use of real documentary footage to depict the destruction wrought by the aliens, but the proceedings work surprisingly well in an action-suspense context. Even the substandard special effects aren’t too annoying (being about on par with those of most modern Disney movies), although the Amazon production placement is quite distracting given that Prime video ended up with distribution duties.
It’s when the film switches to a techno thriller in the final scenes that it really falls apart. The pacing is too frantic, and the storytelling too perfunctory and implausible (it’s quite convenient that the invading aliens halt their destruction so the heroes can figure out a way to do their attackers in).
Ice Cube’s performance has been widely mocked, but he actually shows some range here. The sneering that tends to inform his acting is kept to a minimum, as is the ghetto slang he likes to employ. I do, however, question him being cast as a Homeland Security agent, in which guise he’s never too convincing. Ditto Eva Longoria as a scientist, although she has too little screen time to annoy overmuch.
Vital Statistics
WAR OF THE WORLDS
Universal Pictures
Director: Rich Lee
Producers: Patrick Aiello, Timur Bekmambetov
Screenplay: Kenneth A. Golde, Marc Hyman
(Based on a novel by H.G. Wells)
Cinematography: Christopher Probst
Editing: Charles Ancelle, Jake York
Cast: Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Iman Benson, Henry Hunter Hall, Devon Bostick, Andrea Savage, Clark Gregg, Nicole Pulliam, Michael O’Neill, Jim Meskimen