People are hate-watching “War of the Worlds” and loving every second
The 2025 remake of War of the Worlds has gone viral for all the wrong reasons. The Amazon Prime sci-fi film, starring Ice Cube and told mostly through his computer screen, has earned a rare 0% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet the internet can’t look away. Viewers are calling it the worst movie of the year, and that’s exactly why so many are tuning in. The reviews are brutal and unintentionally hilarious as folks meme their way through what might be the next sci-fi cult classic.
If there's anything more entertaining than a great film, it's a terrible one.
Ice Cube's War of the Worlds
The new War of the Worlds hit Amazon Prime Video on July 30, 2025, to little fanfare. Work began on the film in 2020 when, due to the pandemic, running a big production wasn't safe or legal. Luckily for all of us, this adaptation of the 1898 novel by H. G. Wells used "screenlife technology" to get the job done.
This particular form of visual storytelling tells all or most of the story from a screen, such as that of Ice Cube's computer. This allowed the 2025 science fiction project to allegedly have "the look of a commercial event film but at the budget of a contained thriller."
Ed Power of the Daily Telegraph put it a little differently.
"It is silly, shoddy and features far too much of rapper-turned-leading man Ice Cube staring at a computer screen while looking as if he’s working through a reasonably urgent digestive ailment," he wrote in his one-star review.
It fared a little better among average viewers than among critics, earning a 20 percent "Popcornmeter" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, some of these positive reviews might be heavy on the irony.
"The acting was top-notch, the story was incredible and it moved me to tears," said Kirsten D.
"My grandmother who has been in a wheelchair for the past three years found the strength to walk and she snatched the remote from me and turned it off. Then she proceeded to grab a gun and she shot the tv three times. This movie is so powerful and im so grateful that it helped my grandma walk again."
"THIS CAN'T BE A REAL MOVIE": Social media reactions are half the fun
Whether this film will turn into a true flop remains to be seen. The jokes coming from social media could easily fuel traffic to Amazon as people rush to hate-watch the worst movie of the year.
Some of these teasers are intriguing. X user @astral_sapphic noted how "halfway through the movie the president calls up ice cube on zoom, says 'Lets do this war of the worlds,' and ice cube stares back like this."
"If you were there that night I watched Unfriended and its sequel, I promise you, this is 1000 times more confusing, disorienting, frustrating, and genuinely hilarious with how amateur it is," reviewed @Goosenpaii.
User @Browntable_Ent graced us with a clip of the "that was easy" button moment, adding, "THIS CAN'T BE A REAL MOVIE."
Quite a few people watched it specifically because the reviews were so terrible, with some encouraging others to do the same.
"Dipping below like 5% on Rotten Tomatoes has basically the same appeal to me as breaking 90%," wrote @Lons. "That's some shit I need to experience right there."
"I don’t know how to put it but when a movie scores this low I now need to view it ironically with my wife," @noduckie4u admitted. "Even better is I won’t tell her it’s bad and just keep looking at her with her expectations set to god knows where."
"This movie is feels like it's three hours long," said @pinknishii. "This is pain and torment as a viewing experience."
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