Even though I’ve worked remotely for years now, I still know a good water cooler movie when I see one. And I have a hunch Netflix’s latest No. 1 movie, “A House of Dynamite,” is going to be what everyone’s talking about on Monday. There are two reasons I’ve come to that conclusion: 1) It taps straight into the anxieties that all our droomscrolling these days trudges up; and 2) Its divisive ending has some viewers pissed.
“A House of Dynamite,” which premiered on Netflix on October 24, is the first film from Kathryn Bigelow, the Oscar-winning director of “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker,” in nearly a decade. This white-knuckle nuclear thriller is a ticking time bomb with a structural twist, chronicling the American government’s panicked response to an unidentified nuclear warhead heading straight for Chicago.
What is ‘A House of Dynamite’ about?
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Written by former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim, “A House of Dynamite” has a simple but nightmarish premise: an unidentified nation has fired a nuclear missile at Chicago with only minutes left until impact.
The movie tracks the 18 minutes that follow the nuke’s launch from three different perspectives: the White House Situation Room, the U.S. Strategic Command, and finally from the president himself. All while the clock is running out until impact, and the stakes ramp up as U.S. officials scramble to respond.
The Netflix movie has an all-star cast that includes Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee and Jason Clarke. And there are even brief roles for Willa Fitzgerald and Kaitlyn Dever.
Why audiences are pissed at this new Netflix No. 1 movie
We’ve entered spoiler territory now, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. Why are audiences fuming over the ending of “A House of Dynamite”? Put simply: Because it’s a nuclear war movie where you don’t see a single nuke.
Three times, we watch the clock tick down as the missile and its devastating payload get closer to Chicago, only for the movie to end on an ambiguous note. Right before the president (Elba) is about to issue his command — whether to respond to the attack, guns blazing, or accept the loss of Chicago to avoid all-out global nuclear war — it cuts to credits. The actual impact of the missile is never shown, and we never learn who launched it to begin with.
Those unanswered questions are left by design, Bigelow told Netflix’s Tudum, to pose nuclear proliferation itself, and not any one nation or official, as the real villain.
“The antagonist is the system we’ve built to essentially end the world on a hair-trigger,” she said.
Understandably, though, many viewers expected to see how this story, which, again, they just watched play out three times, actually ends. Many flooded X and Reddit to discuss “A House of Dynamite’s” divisive ending.
“I was glued to the TV, then with that ending I was praying the Nuke hit me,” said one X user. “Has to be in the conversation for worst movie ending of all time.”
“Nobody wants to hear the same story 3 times and have it end without an end. Sad that so many good actors were involved in this rubbish,” said another. “The Director literally antagonizes viewers 3 times and then walks out the door.”
I can understand their frustration, even if the ambiguity didn’t bother me personally. Though I was a little disappointed at the lack of answers, the movie’s thought-provoking themes and non-stop tension gave me plenty to chew on. It helped that the only death we do see on-screen — a tender and devastating moment where “Chernobyl” and “Mad Men” star Jared Harris steals the show — was a powerful enough emotional blow that I was still reeling from it when the credits rolled.
Should you stream ‘A House of Dynamite’ on Netflix?
For all the gripes about its ending, “A House of Dynamite” earned a solid 79% critics’ score and 77% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Playing out a nightmare scenario with nerve-wracking plausibility, Kathryn Bigelow’s masterfully-constructed ‘A House of Dynamite’ is an urgent thriller that’s as distressing as it is riveting,” reads the critical consensus.
Like I said, I enjoyed it well enough, and even think it’s one of Netflix’s best movies of the year, though, admittedly, the bar isn’t that high (“K-Pop Demon Hunters” notwithstanding). If you liked Bigelow’s other nerve-shredding political thrillers, I suspect “A House of Dynamite” will be right up your alley.
Then again, if you’d rather not spend 112 minutes caught up in ever-building tension that doesn’t pay off, I get that, too. If that’s the case, let me point you to our round-up of the best action thrillers on Netflix to really get your adrenaline pumping.
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