Tag: Screenlife

War of the Worlds (2025) | REVIEW

Still image of title card from trailers — PHOTO: Universal Pictures.

Directed by Rich Lee — Screenplay by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman.

Only rarely is a movie deemed to be so bad that its reputation takes on a life of its own. In the case of Amazon Prime’s War of the Worlds, we have one of the most critically derided films released by a streaming service, maybe ever. Not only is it narratively unsound, a visual disappointment, and a poor adaptation of a well-known narrative, but the film as a whole also represents everything film critics, cinephiles, and film historians fear about the state of cinema and its future. This is a film with shameless corporate self-promotion on the part of the streaming service, which shows no appreciation for the material it is adapting or any apprehension about what they might treat their audience to. The Ice Cube-led War of the Worlds film from Amazon is, like you’ve heard, the worst film you’re likely to see this year. It is, at once, both embarrassing and alarming how faulty and ill-conceived it is. 

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REVIEW: Missing (2023)

Storm Reid in MISSING — PHOTO: SONY PICTURES.

Directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson — Screenplay by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson.

The filmmaking medium is constantly in a state of development and reinvention with artists seeking to find new ways to tell audiovisual stories. The found-footage genre was a huge trend that still pops up every now and again nowadays, and the latest found-footage-esque trend is the screenlife, or screencast, genre where the entire story is told by showing computer screens, smartphone screens, or the like. The Unfriended films are solid horror examples of this (as is Rob Savage’s Host, a terrific COVID-set horror film about Zoom video calls), and Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching starring John Cho is probably the best film of its kind. Searching followed a scared father searching for his missing daughter. The editors of Searching Nick Johnson and Will Merrick have ‘graduated’ and now serve as directors of its ‘standalone sequel’ titled Missing. On the whole, Missing is a really solid feature directorial debut, but it also feels really familiar and isn’t quite as good as the film it is following up on. 

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