Kathryn Bigelow’s new thriller, A House of Dynamite, has earned mixed reactions from viewers in its first 24 hours on Netflix.
From three different perspectives, the film repeatedly tracks the 18 minutes that follow a nuclear missile being launched at the United States — first from the White House Situation Room, then from the United States Strategic Command, and finally from the President himself.
*Warning — Major spoilers ahead for A House of Dynamite*
The identity of those behind the missile launch is never explained — a deliberate choice from Bigelow (the director behind war films like Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker).
“The antagonist is the system we’ve built to essentially end the world on a hair-trigger,” Bigelow told Netflix’s Tudum.
The film ends on an ambiguous note — with the president (played by Idris Elba) deciding whether to let the missile hit Chicago to avoid a war or to retaliate. The actual impact of the missile is never shown.
“I want audiences to leave theaters thinking, ‘OK, what do we do now?’” Bigelow told Tudum. “This is a global issue, and of course I hope against hope that maybe we reduce the nuclear stockpile someday. But in the meantime, we really are living in a house of dynamite. I felt it was so important to get that information out there, so we could start a conversation. That’s the explosion we’re interested in — the conversation people have about the film afterward.”
However, expressing their disappointment on social media, many viewers were left discussing how they felt let down by the ending.
“Nobody wants to hear the same story 3 times and have it end without an end,” one person shared on X. “The Director literally antagonizes viewers 3 times and then walks out the door.”
“I was glued to the TV, then with that ending I was praying the Nuke hit me,” added another. “Has to be in the conversation for worst movie ending of all time.”
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The ending also generated a lively debate on the popular subreddit, r/movies.
“I get why they decided on that ending. I really do. But as I finished that movie, all I could think is ‘People are going to f***ing hate this ending,’” one person wrote.
“Thought the first part was great, then it just started getting repetitive and dragging on,” another opined. “I don’t mind cliffhanger endings, but this didn’t even feel like that. Just feels like an unfinished movie.”
Despite the complaints, A House of Dynamite has a critics’ score of 79 percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing.
In a four-star review for The Independent, Geoffrey Macnab called it “the most entertaining movie about mass destruction since Dr Strangelove.”
“Seventeen years ago, Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker (2008). Whether or not she accomplishes a similar feat with A House of Dynamite – becoming the first woman to win two – this new feature shows that when it comes to intelligent, adrenaline-filled drama, she is still out there on her own.”
A House of Dynamite is out now on Netflix.
