War is shown to us and taught to us from a very young age, but most people do not and never really understand what that means. I’m no exception; I’ve never seen combat, and I’m entirely grateful for that, but I do consider myself relatively well-versed in world history and, in turn, the major wars that have taken place. People only experience war through the lens of history books and education. This gives people a disconnected view of what war truly is and what being at war means to those in combat and the civilians in the warzone. Warfare, directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, takes the approach of putting the audience directly in line with the acts of war, in a way I’ve never seen on screen, which makes this one of the scariest movies I’ve ever watched.
Usually, I find war films to be disturbing or haunting, but not this one. Warfare follows a group of marines during the Iraq War and is recounted from the memories of people who lived through the hellish 90 minutes, including the co-director, Ray Mendoza. This group of marines spends just a few hours in the house of an Iraqi family scoping out the area for possible threats, when they are ambushed, leading to gruesome injuries and failures in command.
Many sequences in this film are breathtaking, leaving me not so in awe of the film, but in shock at the horror any person in a warzone must face. After a night of sitting with the film, I’m still not over it yet. It’s sat very heavily in my mind since the credits rolled. This film played more like a horror film, bringing me back to the point I made earlier about this movie being one of the scariest films I’ve seen. From the moment the IED went off on screen, I spent a couple of moments watching through my fingers like a child would.
I think that this film does what other war films fail to do in that it shows these guys simply trying to survive and not lose their friends. It’s not bold and brave acts of heroism, it’s young men making panicked decisions and breaking rules to survive. A lot of war films fall victim to the heroic acts and “Bad Ass” moments leading the story rather than the truer experience the people fighting went through. The dialogue is much more operation-based and film-like with military language. No one is giving this bold speech to rally the men to bring up their arms and fight; most of the time, the characters are trying to get and give commands or trying to comfort the wounded.
One of the moments that has stuck with me most is when Ray (Woon-A-Tai) is tending to someone who is severely injured, and another soldier comes up and tries to raise the spirits of the injured man, and he pushes him away, telling him that he is not helping anyone by acting like that. Those who do not speak spend a lot of time silently crying or screaming in pain. The guns, tanks, and explosions are not what is driving the film, but the characters dealing with the consequences of the circumstances they’ve found themselves in.
To say I enjoyed this movie is the wrong phrasing, but I was totally immersed in this movie and have been left in its grip for days since watching. Even in my third draft of this review, I find myself stumbling over how powerful this movie is. The story of the soldiers was not the only element in the film that made it great; the film’s jarring and loud sound design deserves Best Sound when next year’s Oscars come around. The ensemble cast is also quite excellent, but the highlights lie with their lead actors (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and Cosmo Jarvis) and their surprisingly poignant performances.
This is the best movie of 2025 so far, based on what I’ve seen. One thought I’ve been left with is about young men my age and the issues my generation faces with toxic masculinity. There are a lot of memes across the internet saying things about how our biological clocks aren’t working correctly because we did not spend our late teens and early twenties locked in a war like generations before us, or how we are meant to be fighting for our lives. This film truly conveyed to me that in no way is anyone meant to do this. We are not built for war. It is only thrust upon us.