Amazon's cringey War of the Worlds makes me scared for the future of movies

If we can commend Amazon Prime Video's War of the Worlds remake for anything, it's the accuracy of the tagline. "It’s worse than you think," the trailer proclaimed; and yeah, it really is.

Described by Amazon as "a bold, contemporary reimagining of H.G. Wells’ classic novel," the movie stars Ice Cube, Eva Longoria and some of the most cringeworthy product placement ever seen on screen. It's so bad that it can only be satire... right?

WAR OF THE WORLDS | Amazon Prime Official Trailer (2025) - Ice Cube - YouTube

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Amazon's movie – a collaboration with Universal – has a premise that could have been interesting. Taking inspiration from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Covid-19 lockdowns, it takes place almost entirely via the webcam of a surveillance expert played by Ice Cube.

Wells' novel has had innovative treatments in the past. The 1938 radio play directed by Orson Welles famously caused some listeners to panic in the belief that a real alien invasion was afoot. Amazon might have wanted to do something comparable for the age of video conferencing, but I don't think the hammy acting and low-budget visuals are going to fool anyone.

At the time of writing, the movie had a score of 4% on Rotten Tomatoes and 2 out of 5 on Amazon Prime Video.

Whether the result of a shoestring budget or a bizarre attempt to inject some documentary realism into the feature, the film appears to be full of off-the-shelf stock footage presented as security camera or social media videos.

One online sleuth has even tracked down a crudely edited photo lifted from a real meeting of a Secretary of Defense advisory board.

But more cringeworthy than the acting and the purloined footage is the product placement. Look away if you don't want spoilers... but this isn't really a movie that can be spoiled.

Microsoft Teams, Gmail and a Tesla car all play starring roles in the movie. But Amazon reserved top billing for itself.

Towards the end of the 90-minute feature, Ice Cube’s character needs a piece of code to shut down a supercomputer that the US is prepared to nuke to stop the Martians getting hold of. But, darn, he doesn't have USB thumb drive on him. No worries: his daughter's boyfriend is an Amazon delivery driver who can use his Amazon Prime Air drone to deliver the USB.

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, they bribe a homeless man with a $1,000 Amazon gift card to get him to rescue said drone.

Schlocky movies can be a barrel of fun when they're intentionally camp, but it's not clear that's the case with this 2025 War of the Worlds. I was hoping it would turn out to be some kind of inside joke, but it doesn't come across that way. It's not funny; it's just bad.

What's worrying is that this might be the perfect kind of movie in in the eyes of Amazon: 'content' more than a film, cheap to make, full of product placement, and with a title and actors that are just famous enough to get us to watch it.

War of the Worlds is out now on Amazon Prime Video. It really is worse than you think.

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