A House of Dynamite (2025)

Review: written November 2025

Gripping, and yet arguably intentionally unsatisfying

Director Katheryn Bigelow is no stranger to tense contemporary thrillers (The Hurt Locker, Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty), so if I tell you this is a movie by her, set in multiple locations about a nuclear missile discovered en route to the US, and the scrambling of resources to tackle the very imminent threat – you’re probably entitled to have certain expectations about what to expect. Well, this is almost certainly NOT the movie you are thinking.

Set in real time over a less than 20 minute period from the firing of a missile towards the US, and then again restarting the same time period, but from a succession of different points of view, starting on ‘the front line’ missile defence, and moving to the White House situation room, and ending up with the President of the United States, this is a concept movie. A worthy exercise in the exploration of how close to the edge of war we all are at any given time, and the ‘what would I do?’, or even ‘what could possibly be done differently’ questions looming over the entire movie. The movie doesn’t so much provide a conclusion, as let you fill in the blanks – it’s truly an exercise in making the audience think for themselves.

So don’t expect any thrilling conclusion, or expect to leave with a neat ending – expect to have a story very deliberately unresolved. That doesn’t mean the events aren’t told forensically and with appalling attention to detail – the banality of events happening both on and off screen only heightening the tension that Bigelow is well versed in delivering, though this time her bag of tricks is a little different. Here, she is using hand held cameras, conversations with characters on video apps on screen and on hand held devices, and a POV approach meaning we are often wilfully frustrated by what we cannot see, as much as engaged with what we can.

The cast, including Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Idris Elba and Gabriel Basso all give performances which sell the confusion and tension, with nothing feeling overegged, but matter of fact. So why then did I feel deflated at the end of the movie? I think I had been sold on a Bigelow thriller from the trailers – and it just isn’t that. It is people talking in rooms, with the missile launch unexplained, and the resolution undelivered. It’s purely designed to make you think – and while I appreciate it and respect it for having done that, I guess I’d just hoped to feel a bit more entertained, and as such it didn’t feel like a complete experience. To me, it felt the movie had an identity crisis with how it wanted to be perceived and experienced. Head into the movie with that knowledge however, and you may well feel far more fulfilled than I did.