I wasn\u2019t planning on watching the straight-to-Prime-Video remake of War of the Worlds set entirely on the computer screen of a government security analyst until I saw footage of Ice Cube screaming at a young man<\/a> via video call as he shakily records an alien invasion. It\u2019s so bad, it demands to be seen. <\/a><\/p>\n The new movie, released July 30, debuted with a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes,<\/a> meaning that it had been panned by all of the critics who took the time to watch and review it. (It has since been elevated to 3%<\/a> as of press time, thanks to a contrarian review<\/a> from Entertainment Weekly.)<\/p>\n Scoring in the single digits for any amount of time is not an easy feat <\/a>on the review aggregation website, which considers critics of varying levels of prestige<\/a> in its \u201cTomatometer\u201d scores.<\/p>\n Without such widespread disdain, 2025\u2019s War of the Worlds might have been forgotten \u2014 slipping into the depths of Prime Video\u2019s expansive catalogue. Instead, it became a lightning rod on social media.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something magical about a movie that tried to be good and ended up being bad in so many ways that thousands of people still took the time to investigate the extent of its failure. I myself was intrigued by the widespread condemnation of what seemed to be a real movie with a budget and familiar actors \u2014 surely, it can\u2019t be that bad! \u2014 so, for 89 unhinged minutes, I sat down on my couch and watched it for myself.<\/p>\n Ice Cube stars as William Radford, a grizzly \u201cdomestic terror analyst\u201d who spends his days stalking his pregnant biologist daughter Faith (Iman Benson) and underperforming video game streamer son Dave (Henry Hunter Hall). As an employee of the Department of Homeland Security, he has access to seemingly every camera and technology in the Washington, D.C., area \u2014 he hacks his daughter\u2019s fridge to monitor what she consumes (too much soy milk, apparently) and frequently right-clicks on flashing targets on his computer to select a menu option that says \u201cComandeer Drone.\u201d<\/p>\n Ice Cube in War of the Worlds. (Universal Pictures\/Prime Video)<\/p>\n Luckily, William was just starting his workday as aliens invaded, though he frequently declines calls from \u201cSandra NASA\u201d (Eva Longoria) and ignores Microsoft Teams messages from his DHS boss (Clark Gregg) in favor of yelling at his son for buying new video games and hacking his daughter\u2019s computer to see what her baby daddy Mark (Devon Bostick), an Amazon delivery driver, is telling her about their upcoming shower that William is not invited to.<\/p>\n I know that the goal of this movie is to show how, in 2025, the response to an alien invasion would be mostly online.<\/p>\n Unlike the 2005 film adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, we wouldn\u2019t be fighting invaders on the ground as much as we\u2019d be watching clips of the chaos unfold on X and Instagram. I did wonder, though, how aliens who initiated their invasion of Earth by blowing up NASA satellites so they couldn\u2019t be surveilled and immediately began destroying data centers as soon as they landed left our internet intact. The world may be ending as we know it, but because Microsoft Teams and Google Sheets were still operating, some people still had to work.<\/p>\n Ridiculous alien movie logic aside, the fact that 2025\u2019s War of the Worlds anticipates that the apocalypse will be somewhat mundane<\/a> feels appropriate for our dystopian times.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for this movie, any new take War of the Worlds \u2014 and there have been dozens<\/a> since H.G. Wells\u2019 original novel was published in 1898 \u2014 would have to stand in the shadow of the most interesting adaptation: the 1938 radio drama that sparked nationwide hysteria after being misinterpreted <\/a>as a real broadcast of an invasion.<\/p>\n By standing out \u2014 though it\u2019s for being absurd, poorly acted and ridiculously edited \u2014 the 2025 version has accomplished something amazing.<\/p>\n While watching the film, I made a list of the dialogue and plot points that made me laugh out loud. Here are a few:<\/p>\n My list only scratches the surface of the chaos. To take a moment to jot down something that made me laugh meant tearing my eyes away from the screen, where ridiculous things were happening in such rapid succession that even three seconds of dwindling attention meant I might miss an editing failure or a bizarrely worded Teams message.<\/p>\n Even though I was on my couch reading posts about it online, my viewing experience was less like watching a movie and more like attending an event. I\u2019m grateful for the social media dogpile that inspired me to watch War of the Worlds in the first place, but because of the way social platforms seem to reward negative opinions, scoring a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes might not be a rare feat for much longer.<\/p>\n Dan Green, director of the Master of Entertainment Industry Management program at Carnegie Mellon University, tells Yahoo that the collective panning of the film\u00a0reveals how audience review websites like Rotten Tomatoes \u201chave been transformed into a competitive exercise in disdain, reflecting a gamified culture of online critique.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, watching movies and making fun of them on social media and review sites now feels like a community activity. For a moment, people were so united by the intrigue of a 0% score that War of the Worlds reached the No. 2 spot<\/a> on Prime Video\u2019s U.S. movie rankings.<\/p>\nSo, what happens in this movie?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Is it actually <\/strong>that <\/strong>bad?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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So bad it\u2019s good<\/strong><\/h2>\n