SPOILER FREE REVIEW
‘WARFARE’: It’s a very tight line that a filmmaker has to walk when making a war film. It’s easy to slip into spectacle; to glamorise one side whilst villainising another. It’s easy to justify the violence and call it a necessary evil. It’s easy to turn war into a backdrop and forget about the casualties, whether that means actual deaths or the social ones: broken communities, broken minds and broken futures. Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza (who’s actual real life experience was inspiration for the film) manage to walk that line without stumbling, delivering a war film that shows the pointless brutality of war and conflict.
For all intents and purposes, ‘WARFARE‘ is a horror film; but it’s not your classic one. There isn’t a man in a hockey mask chasing teens through a forest, no haunted house with creaking doors or no dolls filled with evil spirits. Instead, the film shows a much more insidious terror, a much more real one. The realities of war. ‘WARFARE’ details the extraction of a group of NAVY SEALS from a house they commandeered in Iraq, 2006. The film stars a fantastic ensemble cast, each getting their own moment of spotlight in the film’s measly 96 minute run time.
The standout performances for me in ‘WARFARE’ come from: Joseph Quinn, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. The cast as a whole share a palpable chemistry, shown not only on screen but also throughout their press tour interviews. This sense of camaraderie really helps immerse the audience and make them actually believe they are a tight knit group of military men.
Whilst the performances are stellar, the films greatest strength is the absolute tour de force of filmmaking from Garland and Mendoza and i mean filmmaking in every aspect of the word. The sound design is haunting. There’s a particular moment where an IED goes off that gave the audience in my screening a bigger jumpscare than any horror film i’ve ever seen. The way the sound changes as the group are shell shocked by an explosion is unbelievably well done. It helps exemplify how all their senses are rocked, bullets begin to sound like lasers and the unrelenting voice comms fuel their panic. The production design is outstanding. Seeing some of the injured body parts literally made me squirm in my seat, they were disturbingly realistic. The cinematography really serves the anxiety of the story. There’s a certain scene where the platoon use a smoke grenade to try and escape into a medvac tank; the smoke doesn’t just obscure their vision, it help creates an eerie, almost spectral atmosphere, as if they’re fighting ghosts. Just shooting into nothing hoping nothing shoots back. I can’t stress enough how well made this film is. It really is one of the best cumulative effort of filmmaking this decade.
I can see why people may think this film is problematic. Every American war in the Middle East is unequivocally wrong and morally unjustifiable. However, i don’t think the way to right this wrong is to completely cease depiction of the conflict at all. We can’t just pretend the war has never happened. I actually think the way to bring more justice to this demonstrably tragic situation is to properly depict it.
‘WARFARE’ shows the completely absurd actions of the U.S military. The platoon leader decides to commandeer a civilian house because he “likes the look of it”. It shows how the soldiers leave the area and house completely destroyed, they retreat back to their military base but the civilians have to go back to living there. It shows the matriarch of the family pleading “Why? Why? Why?” as Will Poulter’s character ‘Erik’ herds the family into one small room as the rest of the NAVY SEALS set up base around the house . She never receives an answer because ultimately there isn’t one. The soldiers even use Iraqi interpreters as human bait! The film starts and ends with the family and this home but the whole film in between shows the occupation that subjects civilians to true, unspeakable horror and subjects the soldiers to pointless trauma.
Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza do not demonise the Iraqi’s nor do they glorify the American cause. The film is definitely not a propaganda film, it’s not like Lone Survivor (2013) or American Sniper (2014). It doesn’t sensationalise conflict to entertain an audience; we see two characters literally sitting in urine and blood for more than half of the film as their bodies slowly give up on them.
‘WARFARE’ doesn’t want you to cheer, it wants you to reckon with it. It strips away the illusion of heroism and leaves you with something far more disturbing. The truth. It’s not a film about winning or losing but about surviving something that should never have happened in the first place.
‘WARFARE’ is released in cinemas worldwide on 18th April 2025.
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