War of the Worlds (2025)
Overall
- Surprisingly competent production trapped inside a terrible screenplay.
- Lots of genuinely clever ideas.
- Execution betrays nearly all of them.
- Biggest problems: screenplay first, performances second.
Ice Cube – Will Radford
- Completely miscast.
- Naturally likable, but can’t sell emotional complexity.
- Constant overacting:
- yelling
- exaggerated concern
- “Damn!”
- screaming at monitors
- Would have been MUCH stronger if he’d played DHS as calm, analytical, and methodical instead of panicked.
- Quiet competence would have created far more tension.
- The guy who rapped “Fuck the Police” is now the primary surveillance headmaster for the DHS.
Screenplay by Kenny Golde and Marc Hyman and some guy named HG Welles
Hyman also wrote the Farrelly Brothers animated dud “Osmosis Jones.” But he us apparently a script supervisor /script doctor who worked on everything from Ghostbusters: Answer the Call to Shrek to Rush Hour, but is strangely mostly uncredited.
This is the real villain.
Examples:
- Accepting Facebook friend requests during a sting operation
- Switching between work and family every thirty seconds.
- Writing emails while humanity is collapsing.
- Constant multitasking.
ADHD: The Movie.
Characters never behave like professionals.
Eva Longoria -Sara NASA
Not her fault.
Possibly the least believable NASA scientist since Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough.
- Walks into alien crater.
- Releases nanites onto her own desk.
- Constantly makes irrational scientific decisions.
Iman Benson – Faith
Does the best she can with a truly awful script. Creates a weird “cannibalizing” cellular process to defeat cancer that somehow becomes a .exe file via her brother’s mad genius skills.
- Has a helicopter land on her
- Nearly bleeds to death due to shrapnel leg injury
- Has like the only genuinely human moment in the movie when she is pleading for her father to accept her choices in her life.
Devon Bostick – Mark the fiancé
Amazon driver extraordinaire
- Constantly berated by Ice Cube
- Can fly a drone like nobody’s business
- Best moment is when he reveals the grandpa Shark t-shirt he wants Cube to wear at the baby shower Cube’s daughter doesn’t want to invite him to.
Product Placement
Absolutely shameless.
- Amazon
- Tesla
- Facebook
- Teams
- Zoom
- Chrome
- Spotify
Ending literally depends on:
- Amazon drone
- Amazon Prime
- Amazon gift card
Humanity saved by logistics.
Pandemic Production
Actually kind of impressive.
Clearly built around COVID restrictions.
Lots of:
- isolated actors
- screenlife presentation
- separate rooms
Considering the limitations…
…it’s surprisingly polished.
CGI
Mixed bag.
Worked best when:
- security footage
- drone footage
- partially obscured imagery
Worked worst when:
- fully rendered robots
- obvious CGI
Sometimes simply holding the shot longer would’ve helped.
Direction
Not really the problem.
Richard Lee actually stages several scenes well.
Production design is solid.
Interface graphics are convincing.
The actors simply can’t elevate the material.
Produced by the director of Unfriended and Searching, other screenlife movies that are much better – Timur Bekmambetov, who also somehow directed a remake of Ben-Hur and then followed that up with a screenlife movie that’s perhaps even more shitty than this one, this year’s Mercy starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson
Performances
Almost everyone struggles.
Standout:
Iman Benson (daughter).
Only actor who consistently feels like a real person.
David Bostick also funny as the frantic fiancé.
Everyone else feels trapped by the screenplay.
Politics / Themes
Interesting reversal.
Initially felt aggressively pro-surveillance.
Ends up becoming anti-surveillance.
Final message:
Mass data collection attracts disaster.
Government should be watched—not ordinary citizens.
Actually liked the ending message quite a bit.
Things I Liked
- Data as alien food.
- The screen-based manipulation of everyday technology
- Tesla sequence (concept).
- Father/son hacker partnership.
- Third-act rebellion.
- Screenlife gimmick mostly works.
- Family payoff at baby shower.
Lots of cool science-fiction concepts.
Biggest Problem
The movie never trusts its ideas.
It keeps forcing melodrama.
Every interesting concept gets buried beneath:
- clunky dialogue
- unbelievable behavior
- bad performances
Biggest Missed Opportunity
Make it smaller.
The family drama actually works.
The surveillance story works.
The movie collapses when this one family becomes responsible for saving the entire world.
Favorite Moments
- “ADHD: The Movie.”
- Ice Cube’s only strategy: “GET OUT OF THERE!”
- Amazon Prime saving humanity.
- Tesla driving through completely normal traffic while everyone insists the city is destroyed.
- Facebook memories becoming the emotional representation of the apocalypse.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t a disaster because it’s cheap.
It’s frustrating because it’s close.
There are enough genuinely smart ideas here that I kept imagining the better movie hiding underneath this one.
Instead, every good idea runs headlong into a screenplay that can’t support it.
Bottom Five Product Placements
5. Calumet Baking Powder — The Shining (1980)
“I’ll admit right up front that this isn’t your traditional product placement. Nobody walks into The Shining craving baking powder. But once someone points out those Calumet cans in the Overlook Hotel’s pantry, you’ll never unsee them.
They’re stacked perfectly. The labels always seem to face the camera. And because this is Stanley Kubrick we’re talking about, people naturally assumed there had to be some deeper meaning.
If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of The Shining theories—and I highly recommend it because it’s fascinating—you’ll know there are people convinced Kubrick confessed to faking the Moon landing in this movie. Others think it’s about CIA Monarch mind-control experiments. One of the biggest theories argues that the film is actually Kubrick’s commentary on the genocide of Native Americans, with the Calumet cans serving as symbolic evidence. ‘Calumet’ is a ceremonial peace pipe associated with Native American culture, and the hotel is already filled with Indigenous artwork and décor.
Now… I’m not saying that theory is wrong. I just think it’s a heck of a leap to go from ‘there are cans of baking powder in an industrial kitchen’ to ‘Kubrick has revealed the central thesis of his masterpiece.’
Still, I love that one innocuous household product has inspired decades of analysis. Whether Kubrick intended it or not, few product placements have generated more discussion than a stack of baking powder cans.”
4. Ouija Board — The Exorcist (1973)
“Speaking of products that took on a life of their own… let’s talk about the Ouija Board.
Early in The Exorcist, young Regan tells her mother she’s been talking to someone named Captain Howdy through a Ouija board. It’s such a simple scene that you almost don’t think twice about it. Until you remember… that’s an actual board game.
Imagine being in the Parker Brothers marketing department.
‘So… what does our game do?’
‘Well… according to the biggest horror movie ever made, it opens a doorway for demons to possess children.’
‘Perfect. Ship it.’
The funny thing is, Ouija boards had been around since the late 1800s as spiritualist talking boards before becoming a mass-market game. Parker Brothers bought the rights in the 1960s and sold millions of them as family entertainment.
Then The Exorcist came along, and suddenly generations of parents started looking at that cardboard game box like it contained plutonium.
Ironically, instead of killing the brand, it made the Ouija board even more famous. Fast forward a few decades and we’ve somehow ended up with eight Ouija movies, including two official Blumhouse films.
Personally? You couldn’t pay me enough to mess with one. Maybe they’re harmless. Maybe they’re not. But if horror movies have taught me anything, it’s don’t be the idiot who voluntarily invites the demon into your living room.”
3. Coca-Cola… and Friends — Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare (1987)
“If you’ve listened to Filmjitsu for any length of time, you know Mike and I have a very special place in our hearts for Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare. It is one of the most gloriously terrible movies we’ve ever watched together.
The plot—such as it is—follows Jon Mikl Thor and his hair metal band as they retreat to an isolated farmhouse to record an album, only to discover that evil supernatural forces are lurking beneath the floorboards. It somehow escalates into an apocalyptic battle between Thor and Satan himself, and I promise that sentence makes the movie sound far more coherent than it actually is.
But before Hell breaks loose, everyone gathers around the dinner table.
And that’s where the real horror begins.
Sprite.
Miller Genuine Draft.
SOS Pads.
Coca-Cola.
Every label faces the camera like the actors are auditioning for a grocery store circular. It’s so shameless that you’d swear Coca-Cola had written a check.
Except… they almost certainly didn’t.
My favorite moment comes about an hour into the movie when Jon Mikl Thor sits down to write music while casually drinking a Coke. He doesn’t just drink it. He rotates the can toward the camera. Then he rotates it again. It’s like he’s desperately hoping an executive from Coca-Cola might somehow stumble across this Canadian heavy metal horror movie and decide to sponsor the sequel.
It’s one of the funniest examples of product placement because it almost certainly wasn’t product placement at all. It was wishful thinking.”
2. Marlboro — Superman II (1980)
“Now this one genuinely annoys me.
The Salkinds were legendary for pinching pennies. They famously tried to get two movies out of one production by filming Superman and Superman II simultaneously, and they weren’t above squeezing every possible dollar out of sponsorship deals.
The result?
One of the biggest family movies ever made features enormous Marlboro advertising all over the climactic battle.
Everyone remembers Superman throwing General Zod into the giant Coca-Cola sign in Times Square.
What people forget is that before that happens, the camera keeps showing this absolutely massive Marlboro truck. Not once. Not twice. Over and over again.
Here’s the part that makes it especially ridiculous.
In the first Superman, there’s a lovely little moment where Superman notices Lois Lane smoking and gently tells her she really shouldn’t. It’s a small scene, but it reinforces who Superman is. He cares about people.
Then one movie later it’s basically:
‘Kids! Look! Cigarettes!’
I understand needing to finance an expensive blockbuster. I really do.
But when Superman starts looking like he’s fighting General Zod inside a tobacco commercial, maybe we’ve lost the plot.”
1. Baby Ruth — Caddyshack (1980)
“My number one is less offensive than it is… astonishing.
The famous pool scene in Caddyshack begins when somebody tosses a Baby Ruth candy bar into the country club swimming pool.
Everyone mistakes it for… well… something considerably less appetizing.
Panic erupts.
The pool gets evacuated.
People scream.
Chemical suits might as well have shown up.
And then Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler heroically retrieves the floating candy bar…
…and eats it.
Now here’s my question.
Who at Baby Ruth approved this?
Seriously.
Some executive had to watch this scene and say,
‘You know what? Millions of people associating our candy bar with human feces… I think that’s a net positive.’
It’s one of the funniest scenes ever filmed. I absolutely love it.
But if your goal as a company is making people hungry for your product, maybe don’t spend five straight minutes convincing audiences your candy bar looks exactly like something you’d flush.
Congratulations, Baby Ruth.
You’ve earned the number one spot—not because your product placement was subtle or intrusive, but because it may be the only time in Hollywood history that a company willingly turned its own product into the punchline of a poop joke.”