The OctoGames (2022)

We live in a world where the equipment to make a passable movie is easily available. It’s not hard to get enough money for a decent camera, a couple lights, and a microphone or two. I’ve been able to make short films with that much before. Anyone can get their hands on equipment if they want to bring one of their ideas to the screen for others to see.

The problem comes when these same creators try to come up with their ideas. Some people aren’t as creative as others. Look back through the Sunday “Bad” Movies history and you’ll see numerous movies that were mockbusters, rip-offs, and retellings of the same story. Metal Man was a riff on Iron Man. Chop Kick Panda was a mockbuster of Kung Fu Panda. Showdown was a retelling of the story made famous by The Karate Kid.

I’m always of the stance that originality comes from how a story is told, rather than the story itself. I’ve mentioned that in almost every recent post. There are times, however, when so many movies go in on one subject at the same time and don’t do enough new with it that I get kind of annoyed. The slashers based on public domain characters are getting a little out of hand. As are the Squid Game riffs, one of which I’m going to be going over.

Here's the issue. I wouldn’t have such a problem with the Squid Game riffs if they were taking the story concept and running with it. A bunch of people are put in a situation where if they lose, they die. One person survives and wins. That concept has been around in different forms for years. Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Death Tube, and The Long Walk all used that basic story concept in different ways. The OctoGames, the Squid Game riff this post is about, stuck way too close to Squid Game. Instead of being a riff on the material, it felt like a cheap recreation.

JaxPro (Brad Belemjian) was a popular YouTuber and streamer looking to retire from the business. His last big series was going to be a competition. Eight up-and-coming influencers would compete in a series of children’s games where the losers would be eliminated in deadly fashion. Once the contestants found out they would be killed if they lost, some of them wanted out. The other greedy ones wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.

Nearly every story beat in The OctoGames felt like it was pulled straight from Squid Game. On the surface, there were the childhood games and people getting killed. That was the very basic premise of both Squid Game and The OctoGames. There was also the name. One involved squid, a sea creature with ten tentacles. The other went with octo, as in octopus, a sea creature with eight tentacles. The very basic stuff was practically the same, with enough changes that it wouldn’t be considered plagiarism.

The characters were also very much the same between Squid Game and The OctoGames. The main character in each was someone who got into the competition for their own benefit, immediately saw people get killed, and tried to band everyone together to stop the games. There was the super selfish person who would do whatever it took to be the last one standing, even if it involved straight up murdering people. There was the woman who flirted with every possible person to try and gain an advantage, and the older guy who played both sides so he could join whoever had more power. These were character types that, sure, weren’t all that original to Squid Game, but were surely lifted directly from the popular Netflix show for this lower budgeted knock-off.

Other than the clear similarities, the lower budgetedness of The OctoGames really showed through how they tried to recapture some of the Squid Game elements on a much lower scale. One of the big sets in Squid Game was the bedroom where the players were housed between games. Three walls were lined with towers of bunk beds that people would have to climb up to. The OctoGames had eight sleeping bags in a garage. Every set within Squid Game was expertly designed with some sort of theme to it. Some sort of large scope to it. The OctoGames had a hide-and-seek game that really only took place in two small rooms of a house. One of the games in The OctoGames was an obstacle course, which could go any number of imaginative ways, even on a lower budget. They opted for a party inflatable, which was laughable. Every game felt like the least amount of effort was put into it.

As much as I’ve spent this post going through everything that made The OctoGames feel like the cheap knock-off it was, there was one thing it added to the story that made it at least the slightest bit interesting. The whole competition was put on by JaxPro, a popular streamer who wanted to upload videos of it to his YouTube channel before retiring from the platform. Everyone who was chosen to compete in his games was an aspiring influencer who joined for the chance of JaxPro promoting them. The OctoGames was a commentary on the great lengths that influencers will go to for fame and fortune. It was interesting enough commentary for a movie that didn’t try on any other level.

That said, the commentary was still derivative of other, more popular and recognized movies. Scre4m had commented on streaming and fame a decade earlier. The way the killer recorded their murders. The motive behind the deaths. It all came back to fame and fortune. Spree, which came out two years before The OctoGames, followed a budding YouTuber who went on a killing spree after snapping from his lack of success. Each of these movies were about the horrible things people would do to become famous. Each of these movies covered that theme before The OctoGames. So, even the one thing that made The OctoGames feel different than the show it was riffing on wasn’t anything that hadn’t been used in other movies before.

The commentary on influencers wasn’t enough to really set The OctoGames apart from Squid Game. It was essentially just a way to pull the characters into the situation. Once they were in, it played out very much the same way as the show it pulled from. Children’s game after children’s game. Death after death. The characters wanting to be influencers fell to the wayside, even for the ones who wanted to keep playing. It became about the prize money, instead. The same prize money that Squid Game held as a carrot in front of the rabbits playing. It was a different motivation to get them invested, with the same end result.

I’ve defended many movies and their originality as being the way the stories were told rather than the story itself. The problem with The OctoGames was that it was so reliant on Squid Game as a story source that it never fully lived on its own. It didn’t do enough to take an unoriginal premise and spin it in an original way. Squid Game managed to take what The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and The Long Walk had done and give a unique telling of that concept. The OctoGames didn’t.

The availability of filmmaking equipment has led to some interesting projects. There were some kids in the 1980s who remade Indiana Jones shot for shot. There was a remake of Toy Story in live action, where someone used a bunch of actual toys. These were at least interesting in that they were passion projects. They felt like people doing something because of their love of the source. They got a pass on not bringing anything new to the table.

When someone gets access to filmmaking equipment and uses it to rip-off something at a lower cost for a quick buck without that love… That’s where I have a problem. That’s where I think The OctoGames fell, and that’s why I’m so down on it. Was it watchable? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it came from the right place. It didn’t feel original, and there was no love in the reproduction. That made it a bad movie.

I’m going to toss some notes in here and head out:

• I mentioned a few movies I’ve covered in this post. They were Metal Man, Chop Kick Panda, Showdown, and Death Tube.
• There was nobody in The OctoGames who was previously featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Have you seen The OctoGames? What did you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• You can use Threads, Bluesky, or the comments to let me know about movies I should check out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.
• Let’s take a look at what’s coming up in future posts. The next post will be about a little movie called #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. I couldn’t help myself. When I saw it had Jojo Siwa, I knew it would be perfect. Then I’ve got Slashlorette Party. Yeah, we’re right into horror now. Anyway, I’ll see you soon for #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead.

War of the Worlds (2025)

Summer 2025 was a big one for movies. The rebooted DC Universe hit the big screens for the first time with Superman. The Tom Cruise era of Mission: Impossible movies seemingly came to a close. College-aged dudes went crazy for The Minecraft Movie, while new life was breathed into the Final Destination franchise. Yet there’s one movie that is arguably getting more attention than all of them.

This might be a little bit of recency bias, since the movie came out on July 31^st and we’re midway through August as I’m writing this sentence. War of the Worlds dropped on Prime Video to no fanfare. I don’t remember any marketing, whatsoever. Word of mouth, however, worked better than marketing ever could have. People started talking about it immediately. It was heralded as one of the worst movies ever made. Everyone who subsequently watched it said they hadn’t expected it to be as bad as the quick reputation was, and then it was worse. As one of the resident bad movie people on the internet, and one who tends to be more forgiving than most, I thought I should give it a fair shake.

War of the Worlds was a modern screen-life adaptation of the H.G. Wells science fiction story from the 1890s. Will Radford (Ice Cube) was the best computer analyst that Homeland Security had. While locked in their headquarters tracking down a high-priority, high-threat hacker, Will watched on as the world was invaded by alien tripods. Will used his surveillance methods and his connections on the outside to save his family and the world.

I’m not going to lie and say that War of the Worlds was a good movie. One, I wouldn’t lie about something like that, and two, it was bad. Do I think it was as bad as people have said? No. They’ve overblown how bad it is for sure. People haven’t seen enough bad movies if they think that War of the Worlds is one of the worst.

There were a couple good things in War of the Worlds. I could see the potential. I’m going to save the good for closer to the end. People are probably here for the negativity, and I’ll give them some of that first. Just know that my negativity doesn’t come from a place of hate or wanting to pile it on like everyone else has been doing. It comes from a place of seeing that potential that it never fully lived up to.

Let’s kick things off with the worst part of War of the Worlds. This is the one thing that was never going to work, solely because of the execution. About 75% of the movie was a compilation of stock footage repurposed for the action of an alien invasion. It felt like a series of clips, five to ten seconds in length, strung together to make it look like news footage that Will watched while the invasion unfolded outside his walls. The movie was shot during the height of Covid and was confined to a computer screen. They had to figure out the action somehow. This wasn’t the way. The few clips of other characters running around conveyed the situation much better than the stock footage of a soldier speaking to the press with his face blurred out. 

Think of it like this. How many movies since, let’s say, the late 1990s have used home videos or phone footage, or even found footage style, to show action? I recall Signs, where one of the most chilling moments was home video footage of a birthday party where the alien walked out from behind a hedge that was shown in a news broadcast. There’s a way to make something like that work, then have the main character react to it. Obvious stock footage being repurposed was not the way to go about it.

That brings me to the real issue. War of the Worlds was a Covid restrictions movie. Think back five years. Around here, lockdowns were on and off. Most places had theaters closed. A lot of non-essential jobs were either put on hold or work from home. People were starved for content. When movies and TV started production again, there were heavy restrictions. Limited cast and crew. The dreaded term “social distancing.” That sort of stuff. War of the Worlds started production during all that, in 2020. That’s part of the reason why they went the screen-life route. That’s why the actors were rarely together, if they ever shared the screen at all. That’s why there weren’t any big action scenes, and stock footage was used. Could they have done some other stuff during the five years the movie sat on the shelf? Sure. But it’s working for their algorithm as is.

Now we're onto point number two. The acting. War of the Worlds was a confusing movie when it came to the performances. Everybody did both terrible and the best they could do. The Covid protocols meant that they likely weren’t acting opposite anyone. It certainly felt that way. Nobody seemed to be in a real conversation. Nothing was natural. At the same time, they were all spewing off exposition in a way that wasn’t boring. So it was a somewhat entertaining unnatural mess.

I want to specifically point out three moments that just kind of stuck with me. First, Will’s disappointed dad faces made me laugh. If Ice Cube did one good thing with his performance, it was his facial expression work. Second, Will’s daughter, Faith (Iman Benson), was injured partway through the invasion. Iman Benson easily gave the best performance in the movie as her character struggled with blood loss. Finally, her boyfriend, Mark (Devon Bostick), was the least invested of any actor. At least, it felt that way. This was especially apparent in a scene where he facetimed Will while driving. That brings me to the third thing that people talked about while describing how bad War of the Worlds was.

Remember what I said about the release of War of the Worlds? It popped up on Prime Video on July 31^st of 2025. It was mostly made in 2020. What do these two aspects of the movie have in common? When people were being quarantined during the height of the pandemic, they weren’t out shopping. They were in shopping. They shopped online. The biggest online retailer was Amazon. Is Amazon. It never stopped being Amazon. Prime Video is Amazon’s streaming service. The third thing that got people talking about War of the Worlds was how Amazon inserted themselves into their own movie.

When I said Mark spent some time driving around, it was because he drove an Amazon delivery van. That would probably be fine for most people. Oh, look, Amazon put themselves in the movie as product placement. Things got a little more involved than that. Mark patched Faith up with a tape gun from the van. That might have pushed a few people over the edge. It was a ludicrous way to make the Amazon driver a little more heroic because of his work. However, that was nothing compared to what the climax would bring.

Spoilers coming up. There’s no way to hammer home how propaganda-like the self-serving product placement was in the climax without spoiling the climax of War of the Worlds. Alright, now that you’ve been warned… The alien tripods came to Earth to mine data. Will needed to corrupt the data with a virus, but he didn’t have a USB stick to insert into the servers in his building. Mark ran through how to order a USB stick on Amazon. For some reason, he had a USB stick to sell to Will on the spot. He also had an Amazon drone for express shipping. I don’t know why a van driver had stock and a drone. I’m not done yet, either. At one point, the drone was knocked down and was like a turtle stuck on its shell. The good guys hacked into some onlooker’s phone to ask him to flip the drone back over. He would only agree with a bribe. They gave him a $1000 Amazon e-gift card. Then they were back on their way to save the day. Basically, the world would have been doomed without Amazon’s delivery services. I completely understand how people were turned off by that. My brain was powered off by that point, so it didn’t really affect me.

I will say that the drone sequence was my favourite part of War of the Worlds. Remove Amazon from the equation. Think of it solely as a scene where someone outside the danger zone had to get something to someone within it. This was the only time in the movie where there was kinetic action shot specifically for the movie. It wasn’t stock footage. It wasn’t a stationary webcam or a closeup of someone’s face through their phone. There was a drone flying to and through an office building while Will ran from floor to floor past security cameras. For this one scene, product placement aside, it felt like a real movie.

It looks like I went with a mixture of negative and positive, rather than the negative then positive that I thought I’d be doing. I turned some of the negativity into positivity. It’s like being stuck in a blender, then saving lives. In the end, War of the Worlds was still a bad movie. Some good facial expressions, a good performance, and one good action scene didn’t make up for the fact that it was an hour and a half of stock footage and Amazon advertising. The positives kept it from being true bottom of the barrel stuff, though. I’ve seen much worse, no redeeming qualities movies.

July 31^st, 2025 was a day that changed the movie landscape for at least the rest of the year. It saw the release of War of the Worlds, one of the most talked about movies. People said it was one of the worst movies of all time. They had legitimate reasons to believe that. I don’t necessarily agree with that stance, though I agree it was very bad. The thing is, it will be one of the cinematic talking points of 2025 going forward. It will be in the conversation of important cultural cinema touchstones of 2025, alongside movies like KPop Demon Hunters, F1, Weapons, and Sinners. War of the Worlds will stand the test of time for how it doesn’t stand the test of time. That’s something.

Something else is this notes section:

• War of the Worlds starred Ice Cube, who was also been Torque and Anaconda.
• Another three-time Sunday “Bad” Movies performer was Jim Meskimen, who was in Jingle All the Way, Battlefield Earth, and War of the Worlds.
• Eva Longoria returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in War of the Worlds. She was previously seen in Foodfight!
• War of the Worlds brought back Devon Bostick, who was previously seen in Dead Before Dawn 3D.
• Finally, Harvey B. Jackson was in both 2 Lava 2 Lantuala and War of the Worlds.
• Have you seen War of the Worlds? What were your thoughts? Let me know in the comments, on Bluesky, or on Threads.
• If there’s a movie you would like to see me cover for Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can use the comments, Bluesky, or Threads to let me know what movie it is.
• And now we get into the spooky season movies. War of the Worlds was already fringe horror, but let’s kick things into full gear. I’ve got a few movies lined up already. I’m already writing one of the posts. The next post will be for The OctoGames. Following that, we’ve got a little movie called #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. Then I’ll be taking a look at Slashlorette Party. I have a few more movies I want to get to, but that will depend on how much time I have. You never know what might come up. I’ll see you soon for The OctoGames.