As an increasingly alarmed surveillance agent William Radford – AKA Ice Cube – watches vision of an alien invasion unfolding on his computer screen, a message flashes up warning: “IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK”.
The words in the trailer for this latest take on English author HG Wells’ 1898 science-fiction epic War of the Worlds have proven prescient in more ways than one.
Released by Universal Pictures on Amazon Prime Video, the movie has been panned by many viewers and reviewers as one of the worst films they’ve ever seen.
“I made it to 18 minutes,” wrote one amateur critic on Rotten Tomatoes, where its aggregate score started at 0 per cent but had inched up to 3 per cent on Wednesday.
“If you would enjoy watching your roommate write a paper last minute on his laptop about aliens, then you would love this movie,” moaned another.
Professional critics have been no kinder, with Rolling Stone describing the new War of the Worlds as a glorified Amazon ad – complete with a cameo by an Amazon Prime drone – and Empire Magazine calling it “thin, frenetic, soulless”.
“When the apocalypse shit hits the fan, a better movie would probably have the lead immediately get up from his computer,” reported Buzzfeed. “This is not that movie. William just messages his daughter’s boyfriend (incidentally, an Amazon driver), telling him to go check on her.”
Amazon’s ‘War of the Worlds’ movie will actively destroy your brain cells without the added benefit of being fun.
REVIEW: https://t.co/CWTXXAPc7A pic.twitter.com/CmDcX2WnyX
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) August 13, 2025
It’s all a far cry from Amazon Prime’s promised “gargantuan invasion” featuring Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) and rapper and actor Ice Cube (21 Jump Street) in a “thrilling out-of-this-world adventure”.
To be fair, the film – directed by Rich Lee, whose previous credits include a string of music videos for stars such as Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish and Eminem – was shot during the Covid-19 pandemic.
And expectations are inevitably high when you’re taking on a tale with War of the Worlds’ pedigree. Wells’ iconic novel about a Martian invasion of Earth went on to become first a radio dramatisation, then an Oscar-winning 1953 film, before Steven Spielberg’s 2005 version starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning.
But there’s no denying the love-hate appeal of a bad flick. Despite it’s abysmal critic rating, War of the Worlds has topped Rotten Tomatoes list of most popular films, just above Jurassic World Rebirth, which has a critics’ rating of 51 per cent.
“Dipping below like 5 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes has basically the same appeal to me as breaking 90 per cent,” says Lon Harris, executive producer of the This Week in Startups podcast.
“A very low score indicates universal agreement,” he told the BBC. “This movie is bad. Now I want to know more… Why does everyone agree? Suddenly, I’m intrigued.”
Five other films so bad they’re (almost) good
The Room
Entertainment Weekly dubbed The Room “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”, yet it’s become such a cult classic that cinemas still present late-night screenings more than 20 years after its release. The box-office flop was written and directed by Tommy Wiseau, who also stars as Johnny, an “amiable banker” whose life implodes when his fiancée has an affair with his best friend. Criticisms of The Room are many – from the terrible acting, to daft plotlines and out-of-focus scenes – but it’s given Wiseau lasting notoriety and inspired James Franco’s 2017 drama The Disaster Artist.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
This 2002 action thriller starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu as a pair of rogue agents who team up to take on a common enemy tops Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the worst movies of all time. To be honest, they lost us at the title. Ecks vs. Sever? Whatever. “A startlingly inept film”, was the consensus of the critics, who said it offered “overblown, wall-to-wall action without a hint of wit, coherence, style, or originality”.
Freddy Got Fingered
“This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” So said American critic Roger Ebert of this 2001 alleged comedy, which he described as “ a vomitorium consisting of 93 minutes of [writer, director and actor] Tom Green doing things that a geek in a carnival sideshow would turn down.”
Fifty Shades of Grey
The film adaptations of EL James’ erotic novels were bound to get critics tied up in knots. Stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan could only do so much with a script that runs out of steam before it even gets to the bedroom, but that didn’t deter the fans or stop it breaking box office records. The first film in the franchise scooped five awards (include worst picture) at the 2015 Razzies (Golden Raspberry Awards). In a one-star review, The Guardian lamented that Fifty Shades was “like being bent over a Jasper Conran pine-effect table and having your bum smacked with a copy of Condé Nast Traveller while the Nespresso capsules go all over the floor”.
Sharknado
Some critics may think it’s a disaster – even David Hasselhoff joked it was “the worst film ever made” – but we’re putting this satirical flick firmly in the “so bad it’s good” category. The Hoff appeared in the third film in the franchise, which began in 2013 with a waterspout that lifted sharks out of the ocean and sparked five sequels that ended with The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time. Ignore the IMDB one-star rating: Sharknado is a film with teeth.
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