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” type of discovered footage movies. I believe they’re a novel approach to current a narrative and may be very artistic in how they make the most of the gimmick. However what doesn’t work in any approach is combining it with a mass surveillance system that permits us to see all the things 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 risk analyst named William Radford who spends his time spying on residents of the US, 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 finest from a desk. But it surely will get to a degree the place I couldn’t assist however query why on earth he wouldn’t simply depart his laptop and go try to defend the individuals he cares about. He’s confirmed to be greater than able to doing the inconceivable with know-how, but he’s one way or the other caught in his authorities workplace constructing.
Struggle of the Worlds follows the everyday alien invasion plot construction, however this time, it’s fully introduced on a pc display screen. The entire narrative is introduced in such a foolish approach that I saved questioning how on earth they might have the knowledge that they ended up getting. The timeline is so sped up that nothing has the right 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!” but it surely comes throughout as poor writing. And it solely will get worse as soon as the rationale 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 outdoors of the agent’s face. Why would that ever be helpful, particularly throughout an alien invasion? Possibly 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 assist will nonetheless be out there.
The Particular FX within the movie are The Asylum ranges of dangerous, with all the things wanting like they might have been completed on a shopper degree 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 truly exhibiting one thing of curiosity. The large creatures really feel like one thing from Portal blended with the basic Struggle of the Worlds tripod designs.
I’m truly shocked that this movie was distributed by Common, as it’s nearly as low-quality as you will get. There needs to be some sort 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. But it surely’s nonetheless baffling how they managed to get all these respectable actors concerned, particularly when their characters are making such boneheaded selections. If something Struggle of the Worlds simply made me admire when different display screen life movies persist with the gimmick and do it proper.
WAR OF THE WORLDS IS STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME ON JULY 30TH, 2025.
