Move over, Steven Spielberg. There’s a new “War of the Worlds” in town.
Actually, you’re probably fine.
A new adaptation of H. G. Wells’ seminal sci-fi classic “The War of the Worlds” released on Amazon Prime in late July, making waves on social media for all the wrong reasons.
The movie takes place entirely on various screens, following Ice Cube’s Will Radford (a surveillance expert for the Department of Homeland Security) as he witnesses the alien invasion from his computer. It currently sits at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes with 14 reviews. The audience score, with more than a thousand reviews, is a mere 14%.
Many have latched onto a text card in the film’s trailer that reads, “IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK” as a sign of the movie’s quality (or lack thereof). The trailer itself, which released in mid-July, became a mini online phenomenon for its bizarre tease of the screenlife adaptation. You can watch it below.
“YOU ARE YOUR DATA,” one text card in the trailer reads. “DATA IS THEIR FOOD. YOU ARE THE HARVEST,” two more text cards follow. It’s not dissimilar to the cadence found in an “I Think You Should Leave Sketch” where Tim Robinson proclaims, “The bones are the skeletons’ money. In our world, bones equal dollars.”
Things picked up once the movie itself began streaming on Amazon Prime, with scores of social media users dogpiling the latest adaptation of the sci-fi classic.
“I can’t believe this is real,” one X user posted. Others mocked the film’s frequent Amazon product placement, including a scene where “Prime Air” saves the day.
“It’s the future of delivery,” one character says. You can see the reactions below.
“War of the Worlds” (2025) was directed by Rich Lee and written by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman. Alongside Ice Cube, the film stars Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Henry Hunter Hall, Iman Benson, Devon Bostick, Michael O’Neill and Jim Meskimen.
This adaptation isn’t without precedent. The “screenlife” genre has continued to develop over the past few years, with movies set entirely on computers and phones as a method of conveying the story. Pre-pandemic entries in the genre include “Searching” and “Unfriended,” while post-pandemic screenlife films include “Host” and “Missing.”
H. G. Wells’ novel also has a history of distinct adaptations. Steven Speilberg famously took a big-budget sci-fi approach, centering the story on a working class man trying to keep his children safe among the invasion. In 1938, Orson Welles, in contrast, helmed and narrated a radio production of the story on Halloween night, infamously causing a panic among some viewers who believed the story to be real.