Most motion pictures handle to really feel actual. They’re normally introduced nicely upfront of their premiere, adopted by casting updates, manufacturing particulars, after which finally a trailer and launch date. It’s very uncommon {that a} film just like the 2025 Warfare of the Worlds, starring Ice Cube and Eva Longoria, will sneak out prefer it’s a secret everybody concerned wished to maintain. Once you watch it, although, you get why possibly, simply possibly, Common Studios selected to quietly drop it with minimal fanfare, within the hopes that individuals wouldn’t discover it exists.
To their credit score, that was really true for an excellent week or so, because the film premiered on July thirtieth, 2025. I occurred to find out about it upfront via Rick Ellis’ Too Much TV newsletter, which contains a via information roundup part, and even then, it didn’t appear actual: Within the days earlier than its premiere on Prime Video, I saved revisiting the Deadline article confirming its release date, as a result of that put up was the first proof of its existence.
I then featured it in final week’s Stream On, Consequence’s streaming suggestions publication, within the spirit of “if sufficient individuals watch this film, then possibly I’ll cease questioning if I hallucinated it.” As a result of fairly severely, the expertise of watching this film on opening day was baffling, and never made any much less baffling by the film now going viral on TikTok (the one signal of it current on social media).
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An enormous purpose motion pictures aren’t normally made in secret is that almost all motion pictures require lots of people to be concerned — particularly massive diversifications of basic science-fiction tales. For example, scroll via the a whole lot of names listed in the credits for 2005’s War of the Worlds, directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise. By comparability, the 2025 movie’s credits are near one-tenth as lengthy.
How, you ask? Properly, this film makes use of a mode just lately outlined as “screenlife” to depict an alien invasion of Earth solely via what will be seen on the pc monitor of Will Radford (Ice Dice) — an strategy enabled by its origins as a pandemic-era production. Now, Will’s a authorities worker with entry to a really secret and really invasive safety system, which suggests he can see a lot via his varied feeds, to not point out his authorities contacts (performed by notable people like Clark Gregg and Andrea Savage). However there are nonetheless factors the place this film maybe utterly rejects the concept of plausibility because it fumbles via its interpretation of H.G. Wells’ basic story.
Early within the film, we see Will get updates from his NASA crush Dr. Sandra Salas (Eva Longoria) on some unusual climate patterns she’s noticing (early warning indicators of the invasion to return) whereas additionally utilizing his surveillance superpowers to maintain tabs on his pregnant daughter Religion (Iman Benson) and son Dave (Henry Hunter Corridor). Then the assaults start — gradual first, then quick — and we see epic scenes of catastrophe broadcast as information experiences or by way of shaky Facetime footage from individuals on the bottom, all whereas Will sits at his pc and tries to determine what’s occurring and cease it.
It’s actually the purpose at which the film’s hero turns into Religion’s child daddy Mark (Devon Bostick) the place the laughter actually begins. Mark, you see, works as an Amazon supply dude, and he helps to save lots of the day by — I swear to God — piloting an Amazon supply drone throughout city. We see this all by way of drone POV footage, in fact. It’s possibly value mentioning once more that this film is offered on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon, a tremendous and good firm! Amazon can do all of it!
Okay, Ice Dice really saves the day, in an motion climax we see by way of him actually working via an information server whereas on FaceTime, as a result of everybody is aware of that whenever you’re attempting to save lots of the world, you need to all the time have your cellphone in a single hand to doc your efforts.
A enjoyable truth for you is that Orson Welles’ well-known 1938 radio broadcast of The Warfare of the Worlds (the one which was convincing sufficient to make individuals consider aliens had been really invading) was solely 60 minutes lengthy. 2025’s Warfare of the Worlds, in the meantime, clocks in at 89 minutes, whereas 2005’s adaptation was 117. Within the 2005 film’s case, that runtime really feels remarkably quick, given how a lot working from aliens Spielberg and Cruise are in a position to pack in. The 2025 film, in the meantime, provides a very ridiculous subplot about an Nameless-type group that’s taking goal at authorities surveillance, identical to the type Will does.
The core message is perhaps that an over-reliance on know-how… is dangerous. However that message truthfully feels just a little toothless, given how we simply noticed that know-how saved the planet Earth. Hilariously, Prime Video’s really useful viewing for this person on the finish of the film was the CBS drama Individual of Curiosity, which was additionally all in regards to the risks of the surveillance state. The algorithm is usually not delicate.
Two issues will be concurrently true: It’s enjoyable to see filmmakers push the boundaries of what’s potential with a comparatively distinctive storytelling strategy, and that storytelling strategy will also be very very silly in execution. (Particularly if you happen to overlook to do issues like take away the reflection of the inexperienced display screen from Ice Dice’s glasses, a factor that occurs in a number of scenes.)
Telling a narrative largely via (fictionalized) second-hand sources is definitely a answer to the issue of “we don’t have Spielberg cash to make this film,” nevertheless it seems to not be the very best one by a protracted shot. That being stated, I’m type of hoping extra individuals uncover Warfare of the Worlds. Perhaps sometime, if sufficient individuals watch, it’ll really appear actual.
Warfare of the Worlds is streaming now on Prime Video.
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