Kathryn Bigelow’s Nuclear War Thriller Will Give You Anxiety

Kathryn Bigelow is back. The filmmaker behind high-octane action pic (and not-so-secret love story) “Point Break,” underrated Y2K thriller “Strange Days,” the Osama bin Laden manhunt movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” and more, hasn’t helmed a feature in almost a decade, but with her new anxiety-inducing thriller “A House of Dynamite,” she reminds us she’s one of the best of the best. While Bigelow’s films have their detractors (many took issue with how “Zero Dark Thirty” seemed to unquestionably embrace a narrative spoon-fed to the filmmakers by the CIA), it’s clear she has a unique grasp on creating heightened tension. She’s immensely skilled, and with this new Netflix film, she kicks things into overdrive to create a narrative fine-tuned to give viewers a panic attack.

We seem to be regressing when it comes to fears of nuclear war. In the 1950s and ’60s, the looming threat of nuclear annihilation was widespread; a strange fact of life reflected by duck-and-cover drills and surplus fallout shelters. After the Cold War, however, nuclear war seemed like a problem we had solved, or at least moved on from. Recently, though, as the world becomes more polarized, fears of annihilation have crept back into the public consciousness (I bet you can vividly recall the briefly terrifying moment in 2018 when word falsely spread that an incoming ballistic missile was headed towards Hawaii). Christopher Nolan’s recent Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer” brought these fears back to the forefront, ending on a harrowing note that suggests that sooner or later, we’re going to blow ourselves to smithereens.

With “A House of Dynamite,” Bigelow, working with screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, has put together a ticking clock narrative that plainly states that in the end, no matter what we do, the very fact that nuclear weapons exist at all implies that we’ll eventually use them and end the world. Everyone in this movie is doing what they think is the right thing, but the film’s bleak message seems to be that when it comes to nuclear war, there is no “right thing.” Every step we take will be another step towards an inevitable apocalypse.

Operating like an anthology film, “A House of Dynamite” presents the same story from three different perspectives. That story involves a nuclear missile mysteriously launched towards the United States one morning without warning. No one knows who launched the missile or why, but there are plenty of theories, and there’s a near-certainty that the weapon is going to make impact with Chicago if no one is able to stop it in time.

Bigelow sets the stage by introducing a host of characters going about what they assume will be just another ordinary day. Our intro into this world is Rebecca Ferguson’s Captain Olivia Walker, who works in the White House Situation Room and is dealing with a sick child. Her son’s illness will soon be the least of her worries, though, and the film uses a similar approach with other characters: we meet them as they worry about things they think are important, like their struggling careers or the impending births of their children. Then in a blink of an eye, all of those things drop away into the background as potential death looms large.

Oppenheim’s script keeps covering the same block of time: the 19 or so minutes leading up to the moment when the nuke is set to make impact. When the clock runs out, the film suddenly rewinds, backtracking to show us another set of characters grappling with the same timeline. It’s effective and nerve-shredding, because checkpoints via dialogue begin to appear and we become conditioned to what will inevitably come next. In addition to Ferguson’s Sit Room expert, we also spend time with a General (Tracy Letts) who urges retaliation, an NSA agent (Greta Lee) called in on her day off, a deputy national security advisor (Gabriel Basso) trying to find a solution that won’t get everyone killed, and of course, the President of the United States (Idris Elba), who has to make a decision to end all decisions.

“A House of Dynamite” moves through these characters and others like an ill wind, unrelenting and inescapable. A theme that’s hammered home again and again is that even when these people are doing everything right and following strict procedure, their fates seem sealed. “This is insanity!” Elba’s POTUS groans at one point, only for Letts’ General to reply: “This is reality.” The message is abundantly clear: The minute humanity went ahead and developed nuclear weapons, we set in motion a chain of events that will inevitably lead to our end. We may have avoided nuclear war for several decades now, but “A House of Dynamite” wants to remind us that eventually, someone is going to push a button and nothing will ever be the same again.

This is crackerjack stuff, with Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd adopting a documentary feel with handheld cameras drifting in and out of conversations as characters move from one non-descript war room to the next. You will inevitably be thrilled and troubled by all of this. This really is a good movie. And yet, “A House of Dynamite” also arrives at a very strange time in American history.

While Oppenheim’s script seems to deliberately sidestep politics, watching a movie right now where the United States government is run by competent, thoughtful people feels, well … a little like science fiction. This is not the filmmaker’s fault, of course, but as characters on the screen grapple with how to react to such a harrowing situation, I couldn’t help but think about how their real-life counterparts would behave. While the players in “A House of Dynamite” are professionals, the current government is being run by alleged grifters, TV personalities, and podcasters. One of the characters in the film is a sympathetic Secretary of Defense played with pathos by Jared Harris, and yet the day I screened “A House of Dynamite,” the real Secretary of Defense gave a bizarre speech that included how he doesn’t want army generals to be fat anymore. How can one reconcile the intellectual figures of “A House of Dynamite” with something like that? An inevitable disconnect takes hold that I found distracting in ways that did the film a disservice. Maybe this is why Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” will always be the definitive nuclear war film, as Kubrick was smart enough to fill the picture with clownish buffoons destined to doom us all.

Perhaps I’m overthinking things. Perhaps “A House of Dynamite” is not meant to reflect our current moment but instead a scenario that could happen at any time, under any administration. Maybe the film will feel different if we revisit it in a few years when potentially competent people are back in charge (if we don’t blow ourselves up before that, that is). Maybe not.

But these issues aside, “A House of Dynamite” delivers on its promise of creating a gripping, well-crafted, anxiety-inducing thriller that sticks with you. As the film arrived at its last act, I found myself literally leaning forward in my theater seat to lean on the seat in front of me because sitting back no longer felt like an option. Bigelow also pulls some great, realistic performances from her cast. Elba’s POTUS is believably uncertain as to what he should do next, and I was particularly impressed with Gabriel Basso as the thoughtful deputy national security advisor scrambling to dial down the temperature (ironically, real-world political connections rear their heads here, too, as Basso previously played now-Vice President J.D. Vance in Ron Howard’s ill-advised “Hillbilly Elegy” movie).

The final moments of “A House of Dynamite” may leave some viewers disappointed, and I have to admit that I wasn’t entirely sure about the conclusion when the credits began to roll. But the more I sat with the film, the more I began to feel that there was really no other way for Bigelow and Oppenheim to bring things to a close. There’s no easy resolution to be found here, simply because there’s no easy resolution to the nuclear problem we have foolishly created for ourselves. The film’s official tagline sums it up succinctly: “Not if. When.”

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

“A House of Dynamite” will open in select theaters on October 10, before streaming globally on Netflix on October 24, 2025.