The Worst Movie Product Placement Of 2025 Has To Be Seen To Be Believed

Spoilers follow.

Not since the days of "The Room" and "Birdemic" has a crappy movie captured the mainstream consciousness like Rich Lee's "War of the Worlds." A laughably bad film that seemingly came out of nowhere, this new take on H. G. Wells' sci-fi classic is a "screenlife" movie, which means it takes place entirely on computer and phone screens. To be fair, the screenlife format isn't inherently bad. The first "Unfriended" and the thriller "Searching" both find genuinely exciting ways to exploit this scenario. And, at least in theory, an alien invasion flick set entirely on screens isn't such a terrible idea. Lord knows that if aliens really did invade, we'd all be posting our way through it.

But this new "War of the Worlds" is extremely lousy. Cheap-looking, loaded with bad acting, and full of dialogue that's bound to inspire unintentional laughs, it's a special kind of bad movie — the type that only comes along every so often. To be sure, there are many bad movies released on a yearly basis. But "War of the Worlds" falls into coveted "so bad it's good" territory, although I'd use the word "good" very loosely here.

A Universal Pictures film dumped onto Prime Video this month, "War of the Worlds" has become a huge streaming hit. Folks keep hearing about what a piece of junk this thing is and they want to experience it for themselves. And I'm no different. I love a bad movie, gang, so I excitedly fired up Prime Video to check this bad boy out. Sure enough, it was pretty damn bad! And one of the most egregious things about the film is that this direct-to-Prime movie seems to double as a Prime commercial. Because during the film's "exciting" climax, the characters use Amazon Prime drone delivery to save the world.

In the new "War of the Worlds," Ice Cube plays Will Radford, a Homeland Security agent who seems to spend most of his workday using government surveillance to spy on his adult children. Will is still grieving the death of his wife, and the movie conveys this by having him frequently re-listen to the last message she sent him, in which we hear her say "Remember to take out the trash today, and be nice to the kids!" (???) 

Anyway, aliens invade Earth, blow stuff up, and then begin sucking up all our data, to the point where people's Facebook posts vanish (which honestly doesn't sound like such a bad thing, but I digress). Eventually, Will teams up with his hacker son (Henry Hunter Hall), his doctor daughter (Iman Benson), her boyfriend Mark (Devon Bostick), and someone who works at NASA (Eva Longoria) to save the world.

And how do they save the world? With a little help from Amazon Prime! You see, Mark is an Amazon delivery driver, and near the end of the film, Will needs to get his hands on a flash drive to help upload a virus to take down the aliens. Unfortunately, Will is sans flash drive, but Mark has a brilliant idea: Will can order a flash drive off Amazon Prime, and Mark can use his handy Amazon Prime delivery drone to get it in Will's hands!

The Amazon lovefest doesn't stop there. While Mark is piloting the delivery drone, those pesky aliens knock it out of the sky. It lands on its back and can't get back up, much like a turtle. What are our heroes to do? Thankfully, a homeless man happens to be nearby, and to entice him to flip the drone over so it can get airborne again, they give this unhoused individual a $1000 Amazon gift card. Thank you for your service, sir. 

Even if you want to ignore all the other problems with "War of the Worlds" — problems that include Ice Cube spending the whole movie looking as if he didn't even bother to read the script before they started filming — the non-stop mentions of Amazon Prime are laughable at best and hideous at worst. It's as if the film is a secret commercial for the wonderful world of Amazon Prime.

So if you yourself are a good little consumer who pays a premium for Amazon Prime, why not fire up Prime Video and watch "War of the Worlds"? Then when it's over, hop on Amazon and order some more junk you don't need. It might just save the world. And oh yeah, remember to take out the trash today, and be nice to the kids.