Before Spider-Man, Tom Holland Was In A Bleak Movie About Nuclear War That's Streaming For Free

Tom Holland is having a record year. He starred in the two biggest movies of 2026 — "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" and "The Odyssey" — and is earning widespread critical praise for his performances. But back in 2013, four years before he first suited up as Spider-Man, Holland was an up-and-coming actor looking for his big break. Nuclear war/romantic drama "How I Live Now" wasn't it, but it remains an interesting entry in the young star's filmography, and you can stream it for free on Tubi.

There are some brilliantly harrowing, doom-laden movies about nuclear war. And there are movies like "How I Live Now," which use the nuclear apocalypse merely as a backdrop for a more personal story. Unlike something like "Threads," the apocalyptic TV movie that shook Britain to its core in the 1980s, "How I Live Now" isn't interested in snapping audiences out of their complacency about the devastating power of thermonuclear weapons. Instead, it's interested in telling a love story and giving then-little-known actors a chance to shine. As director Kevin Macdonald told The Playlist in 2013, "[The film] was designed, financially, to be with no name actors at all. [star, Saoirse Ronan] so wanted to do it [...] Everybody else in this will be unknown, never having acted before."

One of those "unknowns" was Holland, who had actually acted before. In fact, Holland had already delivered arguably his best performance in 2012's "The Impossible." Clearly, Macdonald was unaware. Had he been, he might have spoken a little more highly of the British actor and perhaps even used him more in "How I Live Now." Whether that would have helped, however, remains unclear, as the movie didn't make much of an impact upon its 2013 debut.

"How I Live Now" is based on Meg Rosoff's 2004 YA novel of the same name about an American teen who travels to Britain and falls in love with her cousin as nuclear war breaks out. Naturally, the 2004 release of "How I Live Now" wasn't entirely without controversy, which Rosoff addressed in an interview with Film4. "I really take exception to the whole notion of incest when it comes to the book," she said. "[...] Call me naive, but it never even occurred to me when I was writing the book that it was going to be contentious [...] I come from thousands of years of Eastern European Jews, where everyone married their cousins." Regardless, the controversy wasn't enough to completely undermine the release of Rosoff's book, and almost a decade later Hollywood decided it was time to adapt this cousin love story.

In the film, Saoirse Ronan (who at one point came close to playing Florence Pugh's Marvel character) plays American teenager Elizabeth "Daisy" Rybeck, whose father sends her to her Aunt Penn's (Anna Chancellor) home in the English countryside for the summer. There, she meets her three cousins, Eddie (George MacKay), Isaac (Tom Holland), and Piper (Harley Bird). There's plenty of frolicking in the bucolic landscapes surrounding the home, as Daisy and her cousins bond and a spark develops between her and Eddie. But the tranquility is shattered when terrorists detonate a nuke over London and soldiers storm Aunt Penn's home. With the cousins separated and taken to various parts of Britain, it's up to Daisy to find her way back to Eddie and the gang. It's sort of like Enid Blyton's beloved "Famous Five" novels but with more cousin romance and nuclear war.

The dystopian YA adaptation craze hadn't quite run its course in 2013. In fact, it was in full swing following the release of 2012's "The Hunger Games." By the time Tom Holland led a box office flop based on a beloved sci-fi book in 2021, however, the craze had all but died. Thankfully, "How I Live Now" is much better than 2021's "Chaos Walking," even if it did only make $1.1 million on a $1 million budget.

The film has a 65% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 107 reviews, which is right on the borderline of being "certified fresh" except that not enough "top critics" liked it for it to be given that arbitrary honor. Bruce DeMara of the Toronto Star certainly liked the movie, though. The critic noted how "How I Live Now" depicts a group of young people responding to civilizational collapse but is also "a poignant love story, a compelling, against-all-odds one at that." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle was less impressed, however, claiming the film "makes World War III seem boring" and that introducing such a momentous event into the narrative without exploring it more deeply was a fatal flaw.

The only way to know which of these takes you agree with is to check out "How I Live Now" on Tubi. It might not be one of Holland's best movies, but it's interesting to see the young actor giving it his all and — as with "The Impossible" — demonstrating a remarkable dramatic talent even at the age of 16.