Cast: Ice Cube, Eva Longoria, Iman benson, Devan Bostick, Clark Gregg, Henry Hunter Hall

Written By: Kenny Gold and Mark Hymen based on the novel by H.G. Wells

Director: Rich lee

Original Score By: Jon Natches

Studio: Amazon/MGM

Release year: 2025

Audio Description produced By: Deluxe

Written By:

Narrated By: John Bradley

What Is It?: Tht’s a loaded question. The plot revolves around a Department of Homeland Security analyst (Cube) who spends his free time heavily monitoring his family through various means while being kept cooped up in his office. When aliens invade, he must fight them and save his family… from his desk. Using computers.

What Works: While the leads make no sense in their roles, the young actors playing Ice Cube’s kids do as best as they possibly can with the material given. Devan Bostick is fine as the whitest kid you know, who is trying to impress his black future father-in-law. And, Clark Gregg is a solid choice for his government role.

What Doesn’t Work: Literally everything else. This is the stuff of legend. People will be mocking this film for years to come. I don’t know what possessed someone to cast Ice cube as the guy at the computers, but he’s never been so miscast in his life. Cube works best in the field, and often when he has someone to bounce off of. He’s a solid scene partner, and his best work is often because he’s half of a duo. When I first learned of this, I assumed it would be cube running around trying to save the world, like Tom Cruise in the Spielberg version. Instead, it’s like someone saw Unfriended or Searching and thought… what if? And because that person wasn’t even Gareth Edward’s, who made a lot out of Monsters while given very little, this film is terrible.

Cube has dialogue that he can barely read or understand, because not only is he a computer nerd, he’s the one they call on to give White House briefings (via Zoom or something), and its like he’s reading from cue cards. When you think about how he had to film this, alone, and playing make believe with prop screens, it’s amazing he got anything out at all. When I think of actors who thrive in isolation, Ice Cube isn’t one of them. When I think of actors who, at 56, can still believably kick ass in the streets, I think of Ice Cube.

And Eva Longoria seems equally lost, just with far less screentime. They also saddle her with some field work.

Beyond just miscasting, even if we found a nerdy actor for the lead, he’s still written as a creeper. before aliens ever attack, he’s sitting at his desk, hacking into whatever he can to see camera footage, texts, emails, anything to spy on his kids. His daughter is a grown woman about to have a baby.

then, even though he has two kids, when shit hits the fan, it takes a long time for him to even check on his son. He’s laser focused on the daughter, and trying to get the baby daddy to her. the other kid could have easily died in that amount of time. favoritism.

then when we do check on the son, it turns out he’s some mega hacker who has bamboozled his father, who is already supposedly the best there is. Apparently there’s a secret government spy program that the guy who spends all day using spy programs to watch his kids doesn’t know about. So, he has to hypocritically bitch out his boss on privacy and stuff, and we learn about Goliath.

Somewhere in all this, they’ll bring up that the attack was targeted and destroyed all the satellites, but yet cube easily was finding and rerouting satellites earlier.

this film is so profoundly stupid, I’m sure it’s actually illegal somewhere. Somewhere, they have a law of idiocy that prevents this film from being released.

The Audio description: Ironically, a shit film has great audio description. Go figure. Since Cube spends the whole film in one location staring at screens, the description has to follow what he’s watching, how he’s watching it, and try and describe fleeting images of alien attacks. John Bradley is also a boss narrator, and his voice is awesome. No notes.

Why you Might Like it: you won’t. This movie already has a 3.3 on IMDb and that’s going to continue to trend down, not up.

Why You Won’t Like it: Horrible miscasting, a terrible script, and inept direction make this basically unwatchable, even with the excellent audio description.

Final thoughts: With media companies turning to writing films off for tax purposes, never to be seen again, perhaps Amazon could have done themselves, and us a big favor. Ice Cube as the leading DHS analyst will go down in history as one of the worst examples of miscasting in film history, showing a fundamental misunderstanding of why people watch Ice Cube movies in the first place, and how his acting career has maintained over 30 years without ever being considered for a major acting prize.

Rotten: 1.2/10