The first (and much the superior) hour is a masterclass in escalating tension, with grandiose and brilliantly executed sequences following in rapid succession.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 12, 2024

Highly influential, ever innovative, and full of emotion and slick formal trickery, the film lives up to the precise definition of what "Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds" should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 5, 2022

Cruise is in fine dramatic form and Spielberg's journey to the dark side is superbly realised.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 29, 2022

Spielberg is a master at staging both epic scenes of disaster and intimate moments of terror and triumph. The imagery is epic and the effects thrilling...

Full Review | Jul 9, 2022

This superior popcorn flick revels in the unabashed joy of blowing stuff into oblivion.

Full Review | Jul 5, 2022

its human hero strap[s] explosive devices to his body in a campaign of guerrilla warfare and suicide bombing against an overwhelming force - all tactics of, precisely, the othered terror on which America had recently declared war.

Full Review | Oct 16, 2021

The great weakness, ultimately, of the film is that its ambivalence, unease and discomfort about American realities in general and the "war on terror" in particular are not placed in the forefront, developed or worked through to the end.

Full Review | Feb 15, 2021

The carnage is more colossal than in most disaster movies, the sets are spectacularly ominous, the CG is impressive, and the desperation is more psychologically trying.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 9, 2020

War of the Worlds pulses with excitement, danger and palpable nervous energy that generates a legitimate and lasting awe.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2020

Spielberg always delivers a quality product and teaming him with Cruise results in a well done, modern rendition of this classic story.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 17, 2020

While the Wells story is a classic, Spielberg manages to find a way to truly make War of the Worlds his own.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 13, 2020

Spielberg does a masterful job of building the tension and creating an effective science-fiction thriller.

Full Review | Nov 18, 2019

Moves from one action set piece to another, seeing everything only through the eyes of its main characters, and in doing so avoids many sci-fi clichés.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 5, 2019

On one hand the movie is a game, a conscious display... of Spielberg's technical mastery; on the other it reaches toward what might be prophecy, or passionate allegory, or exhortation to mindfulness of real human suffering.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2018

The story is affecting, the action scenes are thrilling, the issues are resonant.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 15, 2013

An unstoppable juggernaut of action and anxiety that will have you blundering from the cinema in a state of nervous exhaustion. Don't expect any soft drink promotional tie-ins with this summer blockbuster.

Full Review | May 27, 2011

War of the Worlds is that most rare of screen adaptations - a film that is faithful to its origins and at the same time, its own separate creature. The first half is better than the second, but what a first half.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 7, 2011

Alien invasion thriller too scary for young kids.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 17, 2010

so impressive in so many ways that it makes the frustration over its miserable final moments that much harder to bear

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 17, 2010

...in its own right it works well enough most of the time to pass an entertaining couple of hours.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 19, 2010