Movies
‘War of the Worlds’ Starring Ice Cube Is Going Viral for All the Wrong Reasons
“It’s worse than you think.” That’s the actual tagline featured in the trailer for War of the Worlds, a new adaptation of the H.G. Wells sci-fi classic that seemingly came out of nowhere last week. The trailer was released online just a few days before the movie was released exclusively on Prime Video, leaving many to wonder where the hell this thing even came from.
Now that many people have taken the time to actually watch the movie, well, War of the Worlds (2025) has gone viral on social media for one particularly noteworthy reason: with 13 reviews currently submitted at this time, the movie has a 0% Rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes.
From director Rich Lee and producers Patrick Aiello and Timur Bekmambetov, War of the Worlds premiered on Prime Video on July 30, and the new twist on the classic tale presents the alien invasion through the lens of the “screenlife” subgenre, where literally everything in the movie takes place on a computer screen. It’s a style Bekmambetov has practically cornered the market on with films including Unfriended, Searching, and Missing, and the idea to give War of the Worlds the screenlife treatment was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And yes, the film stars Ice Cube in the leading role, with the screenlife format allowing Cube and co-stars like Eva Longoria to film their parts at a distance from each other during the early days of the pandemic. Aiello said in a statement, “For the first time ever, a studio-scale sci-fi epic has been produced using a format that places audiences inside the action through the lenses of phones, computers, and tablets. It’s a visceral, first-person experience designed for big screens in a language and format that is now natural within our daily lives.”
Bekmambetov teased in his own statement, “It’ll be exciting for audiences to watch the movie and ask themselves: if aliens invaded today, how would we experience it? Most likely, we’d be watching it on our phones. In that way, it’s kind of a modern spin on Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds. Back then, he used radio, the most popular technology of the time, to make people believe the invasion was real. Today, that medium is the screen of our devices.”
Those best laid plans, well, it’s safe to say they fell apart somewhere along the way. War of the Worlds has quickly become one of the most panned movies of the year, the sort of movie that misfires so hard that it’s actually becoming a must-watch. The term “so bad, it’s good” comes to mind, reserved for those rare movies that are notable precisely because they’re so bad.
This modern-day adaptation follows “Will Radford (Ice Cube), a top cyber-security analyst for Homeland Security, who spends his days tracking potential threats to national security through a mass surveillance program, until an attack by an unknown entity leads him to question whether the government is hiding something from him… and the rest of the world.”
“It is silly, shoddy and features far too much of rapper-turned-leading man Ice Cube staring at a computer screen while looking as if he’s working through a reasonably urgent digestive ailment,” writes Ed Power in his review for The Daily Telegraph.
Adam Does Movies proclaims, “I really don’t like how a lot of modern reviewers say outlandish statements like “This is the worst movie ever made.” Mainly because it devalues films like War of the Worlds, who had to work really hard to actually be one of the worst movies ever made.”
Giant Freakin Robot chimes in, “It’s noteworthy because of all the attempts to adapt this story, this is the worst one.”
Austin Burke from Flick Fan Nation says, “Poorly written and awkwardly paced, War of the Worlds in contention for one of the worst movies of the decade so far.”
And the film’s most notable review comes from Variety critic Peter Deburge, who had this to say: “Even with a Prime subscription, you have to sit through two minutes of ads to watch 90 more of what amounts to a feature-length commercial for all things Amazon.” It’s one of many reviews that points out the Amazon product placement within the, well, Amazon Prime movie.
Curious to see this one for yourself? The 1 hour, 29 minute War of the Worlds (2025) is now streaming on Prime Video. Or you can stick with the trailer, which might be enough for most…
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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