PLOT: A grounded sci-fi movie within the vein of District 9, that touches on themes of privateness versus surveillance
REVIEW: I’ve all the time been an ardent defender of the “screen life” fashion of discovered footage movies. I feel they’re a novel method to current a narrative and could be very artistic in how they make the most of the gimmick. However what doesn’t work in any means is combining it with a mass surveillance system that permits us to see the whole lot from all kinds of angles anyway. It makes the entire “seeing everything on a computer screen” really feel very pointless. And that’s merely a great way to explain this new iteration of Struggle of the Worlds: pointless.
Ice Dice performs a menace analyst named William Radford who spends his time spying on residents of the USA, together with his personal youngsters. Eva Longoria, Clark Gregg, and Andrea Savage all present up in supporting roles, however that is actually the Ice Dice present. He’s the person behind the pc, so he’s the one with whom we’re spending all of our time. And it’s not like he’s notably dangerous; he’s doing his greatest from a desk. However it will get to a degree the place I couldn’t assist however query why on earth he wouldn’t simply go away his laptop and go attempt to defend the individuals he cares about. He’s confirmed to be greater than able to doing the unimaginable with know-how, but he’s by some means caught in his authorities workplace constructing.
Struggle of the Worlds follows the everyday alien invasion plot construction, however this time, it’s totally introduced on a pc display. The entire narrative is introduced in such a foolish means that I stored questioning how on earth they might have the knowledge that they ended up getting. The timeline is so sped up that nothing has the correct time to breathe, and it makes it really feel just like the story is on quick ahead half the time. The film all the time weakly explains it away with “government surveillance is everywhere!” however it comes throughout as poor writing. And it solely will get worse as soon as the explanation behind the invasion is revealed.
It’s fairly humorous seeing these FBI brokers FaceTiming one another throughout raids and appearing prefer it’s completely regular. It’s already been established that they have already got entry to different cameras and physique cams, making the calls utterly pointless. It’s made even funnier by the truth that the decision is usually in selfie mode and doesn’t present something exterior of the agent’s face. Why would that ever be helpful, particularly throughout an alien invasion? Perhaps simply make a cellphone name and save on battery energy. Additionally ironic that the cell towers are nonetheless working regardless of all this chaos. And it’s good to know that, even through the midst of an alien invasion, tech help will nonetheless be obtainable.
The Particular FX within the movie are The Asylum ranges of dangerous, with the whole lot wanting like they may have been completed on a client stage PC. They typically attempt to conceal the FX with digital artifacting and it by no means actually works. Even funnier is how all of the photographs of persons are so crystal clear, however then they mess up as soon as they’re really displaying one thing of curiosity. The huge creatures really feel like one thing from Portal combined with the traditional Struggle of the Worlds tripod designs.
I’m really shocked that this movie was distributed by Common, as it’s nearly as low-quality as you will get. There must be some type of story as to how all of this took place as a result of it’s genuinely baffling that one thing like this may very well be distributed by a significant studio. Positive, it went to streaming and was all however dropped out of nowhere. I wouldn’t be stunned if this had been a COVID film that merely sat on the shelf for years. However it’s nonetheless baffling how they managed to get all these respectable actors concerned, particularly when their characters are making such boneheaded choices. If something Struggle of the Worlds simply made me admire when different display life movies keep on with the gimmick and do it proper.
WAR OF THE WORLDS IS STREAMING ON PRIME VIDEO ON JULY 30TH, 2025.
