Quick synopsis: Aliens attack! But this time, we witness it all through computer screens.

To fill you in on my non-film-watching life, I work retail. A few weeks ago, I was putting some clothes up and turned around, where I witnessed someone facing away from the store, pants around his ankles, pissing in the doorway. It was disgusting, vile, and rude. Yet I would rather have that happen once every hour of my working life than ever watch this film again. Trust me, that’s being kind. This is the worst thing I’ve seen all year, and I’ve seen the news.

First off, War Of The Worlds is timeless; its themes and messages are still relevant today. Updating it adds nothing. I should clarify, it’s not “updated” in a “same basic story, but takes place in modern times”, I mean, they completely change the themes. The aliens no longer invade Earth for colonialistic reasons; they invade for food. This could still work and possibly tie into the themes. Have the humans discover that they are to aliens what animals are to us; nothing but food and sustenance. You could even have a scene of a character discovering humans being harvested. WOTW (What-wah) doesn’t do this. Instead, the aliens eat, actually, I’m going to need to pause here to gather my thoughts because it’s so damn stupid. The aliens eat data. Because aliens must know my search history.

The other change is that the aliens are no longer defeated by a common virus, which means that it was only luck that the humans won in the book. Here, they’re defeated by a computer virus; so it’s not luck; it’s intentional defence, which, again, destroys the very point of the source material. It’s so stupid, and it’s not even original; it’s the same as Independence Day, one of the biggest films of all time.

The notion of “destroyed by a computer virus” isn’t even the stupidest part of how they’re defeated. Essentially, the world is saved by someone ordering something on Amazon Prime. By sheer coincidence, this movie is available on Amazon Prime. Side note, for this to work, we have to believe that the NSA don’t allow thumb drives, but they do allow random drones to enter their airspace. Although it’s not as though anybody can stop him from using a thumb drive anyway, as there seems to be nobody else in his building. A whole building with one person fighting cyber terrorism doesn’t feel safe. I imagine that would make it very easy for people to infiltrate and blackmail that person.

The idea of an alien invasion being witnessed on a computer screen is intriguing and opens up a lot of possibilities. But it doesn’t work. Part of that is because the film is so low-budget can’t show us what it wants to. Although I guess it’s nice to know that “filming yourself instead of the actual interesting thing” is something that even trained NSA agents do. Not as though filming the actual threat could prove useful, just keep filming your face as you run. That’s definitely what trained professionals would do.

When you see stuff like that, it really takes you out of it. As do the terrible effects. The weather effects, in particular, are reminiscent of something from a PS2 game rather than a modern feature. The news reports also feel incredibly fake. It’s hard to clarify exactly why, but none of them feel genuine. It’s not the logos or the people, it’s the general feel of them; they feel very amateur.

The characters? Terrible. The lead character of Will may actually be an idiot, and the way he cyberstalks his daughter is weird. This is actual dialogue:

His son (certified computer genius): “I have information you might want to know”

Ice Cube: “Not now!”

If, in the middle of a serious event that is mysterious, someone says, “I have information you might want to know”, it would be a good idea to actually listen to them to see if it’s helpful, and to make the film at least 30 minutes shorter.

The characters might work if the performances were good. Spoilers, they’re not. Ice Cube just scowls, with less depth than the shallow end of a baby’s swimming pool. It feels like he wasn’t actually told what he was supposed to be reacting to, just told to make generic faces. It’s not just him; Michael O Neil looks bored, giving a truly terrible performance.

You may be morbidly curious about watching this. Don’t. Don’t watch it, watch good movies instead. Watch films you want to see more of. Don’t watch badly made pieces of shit. Don’t watch movies which pretend to be warning against the dangers of government surveillance, but then also praise Amazon and Facebook, if their data handling methods are squeaky clean. This movie is terrible, and it breaks Prime’s positive review streak on this website.