Alex Garland’s ‘Warfare’ Debuts With an Impressive Rotten Tomatoes Score

In 2024, Alex Garland smashed A24‘s worldwide box office record with the unflinching dystopian action movie Civil War. Now, a year on, Garland’s battlefield is back, only this time it’s even more realistic. Co-written and co-directed by Garland with real-life veteran Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, the first responses to the newest effort are in and are positively glowing. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Warfare has shot straight to success, earning a huge 91% approval rating from critics already, with that number expected to possibly climb within the coming days.

For Garland, a 91% critical score marks the second-best of his entire career, only missing out on 2014’s Ex-Machina by 1%. This includes bettering the scores of the likes of 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later, the 2007 sci-fi hit Sunshine, 2018’s Annihilation, and the aforementioned record-breaker, Civil War. This is no one-person project, though, with Warfare boasting a superb cast that includes the likes of Charles Melton of Riverdale fame, The Wild Robot‘s Kit Connor, The Recruit veteran Noah Centineo, The Many Saints of Newark star Michael Gandolfini, The Bear‘s Will Poulter, as well as the likes of Finn Bennett, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Taylor John Smith, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and Henrique Zaga.

In Aidan Kelley‘s review of the movie for Collider, he gave Warfare a 9/10 and called it “one of the best films of 2025 so far”, citing its impressive sound design, great ensemble performances, and unending tense atmosphere for its success. “It would have been so easy for Warfare to be a grand, glossy, cheesy tribute to the United States military.” Kelley said, adding, “In treating the film as a realistic sequence of events, Warfare not only becomes the best tribute to U.S. veterans that it could possibly be, but it also gives viewers a slight sense of what these brave individuals went through to go above and beyond the call of duty.”

Alex Garland’s Huge 2025 is Only Just Beginning

Early responses to Warfare suggest it could be one of the early contenders for many people’s favorite movie of the year. However, despite such high praise, it is still unlikely to be the film Garland is remembered for from 2025. That accolade is likely to go to one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the summer, the long-awaited threequel 28 Years Later. Directed by Danny Boyle and starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes, 28 Years Later promises to be the horror highlight of the year, with the movie scheduled for a June 20, 2025, release. When the year eventually ends, it could be the strongest in Garland’s great career to date.

Warfare is scheduled to be released on April 11, 2025. For more updates on the latest movies, stay tuned to Collider.