Director – Mario N. Bonassin, Screenplay – Joe Roche, [Uncredited] Based on the Novel The War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells, Producer – David Michael Latt, Photography – Marcus Friedlander, Music – Mikel Shane Prather, Visual Effects Supervisor – Glenn Campbell, Production Design – Phil Valore, Alien Ship Interior Design – David Coleman. Production Company – The Asylum.
Cast
Emily Killian (Dr Allison Fisher), Anthony Jensen (Henry Fisher), Tom Sizemore (General Reed), Michael Devorzon (Mark), Torrey Richardson (Rebecca), Emma Nasfell (Junie), Paulina Nguyen (Alina), DeAngelo Davis (Lieutenant Harris), Craig Gellis (Chris), Jack Pearson (Captain Ogilvy)
Plot
At an observatory in New York, Dr Allison Fisher tracks an object ejected from the surface of Mars as it heads on a course towards Earth. Her brother Henry insists on going to the scene where the object came down. There he observes an alien ship has landed as creatures inside emerge and turn a heat ray on the crowds, obliterating all in the vicinity. There is mass chaos as more alien craft come down and begin emitting gases that will make the air of Earth more Mars-like, along with a Red Weed that drags people away.
Since the early 2000s, the low-budget US production company The Asylum has been known for their output of Mockbusters – films that come out with titles intended to mimic those of big-budget releases in the hope that people will mistake them or not look too closely. In between these, they essentially created the Gonzo Killer Shark film, as popularised by their bad movie hit Sharknado (2013), and have made an assortment of monster films and disaster movies.
Alien Conquest, which was renamed The War of the Worlds 2021 in the UK, is an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898). The Wells book was the very first Alien Invasion story and has been multiply filmed (see below). There is no particular reason why The Asylum made another version right then, although there were a cluster of other adaptations that came out around this same time with the BBC’s mini-series The War of the Worlds (2019), the tv series War of the Worlds (2019- ) and the modernised British Young Adult film War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023) – which would have been just after the book’s 120th anniversary. The Asylum has also previously made an adaptation of the book with the not uninteresting The War of the Worlds (2005), which led to a sequel with War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008), although Alien Conquest is not related to those earlier films.
The arrival of the Martian ships
Alien Conquest is a loose adaptation of The War of the Worlds. As in the book, the film begins with the projectiles being fired from the surface of Mars as seen from an Earth observatory (although the observatory is far more of a key location to this film than it was to Wells and even has the telescope being repurposed as a weapon to shoot down the Martian war machines at the climax). The ship (not a cylinder) makes a landing in a public park and tripod war machines emerge and begin annihilating people with a heat ray. There’s a Red Weed, something that most films adaptations drop, although here it is much more virulent and actively attacks people – “The Martians planted an invasive species?” it is commented at one point. And at the end, as in the book, the Martians are undone by their lack of resistance to bacteria, although this actually has scientists cooking up a batch in the lab.
The Asylum’s in-house effects team have been getting better and better with each film to the point that what used to be cheap CGI effects now often look as though they are on a par with the work from professional houses. There is a particularly good opening on the surface of Mars as we follow the Rover and then see a Martian craft emerge. There are some fine shots when the first tripod emerges and attacks people with the heat ray. The Martians and the tripods are wonderfully evil looking creations – even if the tripods end up looking more like bipods than three-legged.
Alien Conquest also has the advantage of The Asylum’s resident mad scientist Joe Roche on script. Roche has written a host of their films with the likes of Collision Earth (2020), Meteor Moon (2020), Devil’s Triangle (2021), Planet Dune (2021), Robotapocalypse (2021), 4 Horsemen: Apocalypse (2022), Battle for Pandora (2022), Moon Crash (2022), Methgator (2023), Doomsday Meteor (2023), Transmorphers: Mech Beasts (2023), Continental Split (2024) and Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs (2025). The joy of these films is the way in which Roche has enormous fun concocting almost scientifically believable explanations for what is going.
The Martian tripods
Here Roche mad sciences the heck out of H.G. Wells with some appealing schemes with the Martians trying to terraform Earth’s atmosphere to resemble Mars – and then boil off the oceans so that the Earth might resemble Mars’s mass! Or the later scenes testing the Martians vulnerability to Earth bacteria – a far more rigorously scientific process than Wells ever had it – and concocting an antidote. This, along with some fine effects and even a quite good performance from Emily Killian in the lead, makes for an above average effort from The Asylum.
Director Mario N. Bonassin began as a production manager at The Asylum before graduating to director here. He subsequently went on to direct Megaboa (2021) and America is Sinking (2023).
Other versions of the H.G. Wells book include:- George Pal’s production of The War of the Worlds (1953); and the tv series War of the Worlds (1988-90), which posed as a sequel to the Pal film; Steven Steven Spielberg’s contemporary reimagining War of the Worlds (2005) starring Tom Cruise; The Asylum’s low-budget contemporary-set mockbuster War of the Worlds (2005) starring C. Thomas Howell, which spawned a sequel War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008); the low-budget The War of the Worlds (2005) from Timothy Hines, which was set during the Victorian era; The War of the Worlds (2019), a three-part BBC tv mini-series set during the Victorian period; War of the Worlds (2019-), a tv series that relocates action to the contemporary European Union; and the contemporary Young Adult film War of the Worlds: The Attack (2023). Also of interest is War of the Worlds: Goliath (2012), an animated film set in an alternate history 1914 with Steampunk mecha taking on a second Martian invasion, and The Great Martian War: 1913-1917 (2017), which rewrites the story as an alternate history retelling of World War I incorporating digitally created war machines into actual WWI footage.
