r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 15d ago
Official Discussion Official Discussion - Unabomber [SPOILERS] Spoiler
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Unabomber
Summary
A Harvard student becomes the Unabomber after psychological experiments. Years later, an FBI agent's pursuit reveals how his past shaped his deadly campaign that killed 3 and injured 23 from 1978-1995.
Director Janus Metz
Writer Sam Chalsen Nelson Greaves
Cast
- Jacob Tremblay as Ted Kaczynski
- Russell Crowe as Professor Henry Murray
- Shailene Woodley as Joanne Miller
- Annabelle Wallis as Christiana Morgan
- Alexander Ludwig
- Steven Ogg
Rotten Tomatoes: 27%
Metacritic: 46
VOD / Release Netflix — September 25, 2026
Trailer Official Trailer
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u/travvvb_ 13d ago
My main takeaway from this movie was that Jacob Tremblay is a really interesting actor. Like the only interesting moments were when he was on screen (and obviously Russel Crowe).
The structure of the film was so weird that any momentum was killed by switching to present day with the most boring performances, but tbf they were working with what they were given.
It felt like it was trying to be Zodiac but with no real idea of what it was trying to say or what it wanted to show the viewer.
I really wanted to turn it off midway through and wouldn’t have been bothered if I did tbh. Pretty pointless film, but that’s modern Netflix for you.
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u/whiteezy 10d ago
This kid is the truth since he was 8 years old lmao. I’m excited to see how far he goes in terms of acting.
41
u/longjumpingtote 15d ago
This was done at the quality level of an old MOTW.
The interesting part was how they invent the meat of the movie. Even the screenwriter cops to it, “We’re not suggesting that [the real] Ted had this specific relationship with Henry Murray that had all these turns. There’s no evidence of that.”
Then why not just make that movie? A fairy tale about Ted and Henry at Harvard? And leave out the Keystone Cops and Robbers part.
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u/trpnblies7 15d ago
When the trailer says "inspired by true events," that's often code for "this movie is gonna suck."
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u/tetoffens 13d ago edited 13d ago
They absolutely should have just made that movie. It was weird. The two timelines are obviously tied together by Ted but still felt like two separate movies that don't really compliment one another shoved into one.
Also, found it weird that Ted had just sent the manifesto when this starts and was still actively sending bombs (that part was fiction) yet they made the team that seems to be working on the case like 4 people. The Manhunt series definitely captured the scope much much better.
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u/crapusername47 15d ago
Tremblay did a good job.
However, I felt the movie was too fictionalised. The closest real world person I can find for Woodley’s character, for instance, is Dr. Kathleen Puckett, who profiled Kaczynski and drove the idea that the manifesto was the key to finding him.
But Miller, here, gets the usual Netflix treatment where nobody believes her (they did) and she tracked him down on her own and was there when the FBI arrested him (she wasn’t).
8
u/Mr_Feeeeny 15d ago
She played a similar character in To Catch A Killer, determined detective who figures out the antagonist early only to be railroaded by the biased department. Also weirdly both filmed in Montreal. Thought it was solid overall, great character actors and engaging framing of 1994 and childhood/university years. Fictionalized to 11 but I enjoyed it!
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u/access_secure 15d ago
Jacob Tremblay playing a college student is messing my mind. Only 5yrs ago he was like 6yrs old in The Room
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u/Gatoray_ 12d ago
This film is everything that is wrong with Netflix. Why fictionalize a perfectly compelling story. Most of the production and acting was fine, but the story is such complete BS all of the care that went into the film is tossed out the window. 5/10
12
u/Pollywantcandy 12d ago
My conspiracy theory is that the writer originally wrote this script about the college psych experiments but could only sell it if they added a compelling public figure. They ended up adding the Unabomber section. Otherwise why add so much fake history??
9
u/RealBug56 13d ago
I can see what they were going for with the past/present storylines, but they didn’t hit the mark.
The acting was really good, especially those scenes between Tremblay and Crowe, but the script just wasn’t very exciting IMO.
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u/sotommy 15d ago
It's so fucking funny how netflix could turn the unabomber story into some female empowerment movie
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14d ago
[deleted]
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u/travvvb_ 13d ago
I don’t know, maybe the whole focus on a female detective single handedly solving the case constantly interrupting the person who we’ve come to see?
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u/saint-ruin 13d ago
There’s very little bomb use for a movie about the Unabomber
9
u/World_Treason 12d ago
Right? Like they dragged on the entire movie about him doing some psych test as if this is the one main thing that broke him (factionalized) and nothing of him going through his uni/post doc/professorship then why he moved to nowhere and became who he is and then the bombings
Like bro we skip the middle section of the true story which is the interesting part all taken away for 2/3rds the running time of this psyc stuff then cops and robbers and ‘dez ppl don’t listen to me I’ll go find the una bomber and knock on his front door alone!’ Bs
4
u/parallel-nonpareil 12d ago
Good performances. I’m a little surprised by the casting of Annabelle Wallis as Christiana Morgan, who irl was a similar age to the professor leading the tests and had dark hair. Why cast a blonde 20 years too young? Very strange choice.
3
u/Fools_Requiem 14d ago
I assume I should just watch Ted K (2021) instead?
3
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u/Living_Daikon5878 12d ago
I really liked the debating and psychological aspect of the movie.. too bad it never happened.
3
u/Midday_Scotch 11d ago edited 9d ago
Interesting vote results too. The ever-permeating bell curve revealing self as well. 50% rate it a 5.
The curve does slope towards the higher end rather than the lower, so, plainly, it is a "good" movie.
I put off seeing this movie for a while. Like the Dahmer tv series.
I am not a fan of glorifying murderers. And over the years you hear things about the Unabomber. I've often heard arguments made and a strong quote (sometimes re-quoted by and attributed to the Unabomber, and even if the quote wins an argument, when you hear the source, there's a sour taste left in your mouth.
It's been so many years since, but I did read his manifesto once upon a time. And I have to admit, in this movie, he is cast as an anti-hero. Certainly not a villain.
When we consider today's audience, poorer than the great depression, and us falling back into a cycle of corporate greed that bleeds the very planet and it's peoples dry of everything, to a point of its own ruin, is it no wonder they might paint our "protagonist" in such a kind light? People are mad at the state of society at large.
When communism seems like, "maybe they just haven;t gotten it right yet", or that we live in a techno-feudalistic society, no different than serfdom, or indentured servitude. When you can't quit a job because you are obligated to feed yourself, to pay taxes, and see little improvement to your own life or those half-way across the globe, you begin to sympathize for a cause that seeks to end suffering.
So, we find our audience wonders, "well, if he meant well, why did he seemingly kill random people"? The laymen may not want to confront any hard truths and opt for the easy, "he was crazy", but if you know anything about Ted, he wasn't an idiot. Unstable? Yeah. An out cast? "The sane man appears insane in a crazy world"
All I found myself asking was, "why, the fuck, didn't the director, focus more why, or how Ted chose his targets? What was the method to his madness?
All I come to conclude is, "we can't promote his ideas directly", and/or, "he really was crazy and didn't know how to make a meaningful impact, and while he had best of intentions in his younger years, being broken, lost his focus or could not find a way to beat "the machine, so he lashed out".
I think that is likely why we never get to see anything more than veneer in this movie. We DON'T want to glorify the man. No man is entirely evil or a saint. (XXXXXX) The manifesto is exposes ideals that most people could agree with. That was separate from the side of him that was angry at the world that created him. His targets may not have had proper context for his goals to making "a better world". SO we got what Hollywood could get away. to keep entertaining.
Now the acting. I must say, I was blown away. Clearly some awards will be earned for this film;
Russel Crowe - shows why he's still an A-list actor. How we are taken on this journey, that Ted must have felt in the story. He comes off as so warm, poignant, caring. A father figure to the child that felt like his own was pushing him and his idea of self, into a corner or be boxed up. "Little boxes...-Music plays in my head".
To the conniving, egotist of academia. and the rage at the end when the climax of it all culminates in his realization that his own words, catching the white whale, and being broken by the sea, despite all of baby mans science. Clearly, Ted was his white whale, and to be beaten by such a young man. Whewph! What a ride! I believed all the deliveries, all the scenes felt raw and real. You loved,him, you hated him, you felt a wave of. triumph wash over at his comeuppance, and that's when you realize, that Ted was the anti-hero (at least in this version of the story).
Jacob Tremblay - Give this kid an Emmy ffs!.. lol I realize he's 20 years old but wow, what talent. For starters, lets go back up to his counterpart Russel again. All things aside, the very deliver of lines. Russel does a flawless American accent. So believable that you do not ever second guess the scene or line delivery because "oh that one word he says a little funny" as you are slightly taken out of the moment. No Flawless, and that is a very important part of acting. Immersion. For someone that has been in the craft for so long, we expect more of him, but for Jacob! Such young in years, and he has the 16 year old voice cracking at all the exact moments I would expect. I was wondering how they got someone so young for such an infamous person in history, for such a dark person in history and , well controversial person in history, to be played by someone so young. Not even legally allowed to drink in the US. And here he is giving a performs on par with the heavy-hitters.
So I guess you've realized I toyed with you all at the start and neglected my rating, so you;d have to either read, or skip the wall of text to find.
While I didn't expect to like this movie going in... I left more than pleasantly surprised. I was... blown away (pun intended).
My ratings started low, and grew until the climax, and between the story, the timing of this story (3 years after Ted committed suicide and current corporate greed), and the acting, this a solid 9.5/10
In science and math, we round up at .5 to I gave this a 10/10 in the poll above.
“To be sane in a world of madmen is in itself madness.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” - Mary Shelley
So, was Ted a sane man in an insane world? An Anarchist? A broken man, that took the wrong path in this version of reality, a man of wasted potential? Or victim of circumstances?
1
u/Midday_Scotch 11d ago
So, this is really two stories in one.
We open with the B-Plot : Current day (circa 1990's) - How the Unabomber was caught. The Hero of our story. I must admit, I was bored most of the time for this plot, and using no mechanism to show the audience we are moving between time frames of decades, was, still pretty fairly apparent even early on, once Ted, the character, is revealed as being so young. Many knew this going in. "psychological experiments made him what he was? So he's... NOT the bad guy?In between every scene or so, we get A-Plot: The making of a Unabomber (Circa 1958) - This is why we watched. To satisfy our morbid curiosity. What could make such a vile human being? Only to find, that as it evolves, he is not the villain, but rather an anti-hero.
I think the B-Plot was longer than it even needed to be. I think the interesting aspects of the case would have been better explored. I think the directive choice to avoid certain aspects of the narrative,, left the A-Plot a little light, and to make a full movie run time, they need filler. I think audiences today are very familiar with two-plot stories unfolding simultaneously due to the constant stream and need for engaging ideas. So while I did not like the delivery, in that sense, by the climax ending of A-Plot, I had forgotten that I was still watching B-Plot. In fact, when I rated the movie, the only thing on my mind was A-Plot, and that is what I rated. B-Plot was an after-thought, an appetizer and dessert. It puts us at a feeling of conclusion. "They caught the bad guy", AND a feeling of wanting more, "Why did he kill people that seem unrelated to a greater cause"?
So I understand why some people might rate this horribly. Either take it with a grain of salt, or don;t throw out the baby (man) with the bathwater.2
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u/Nearby_Leadership217 9d ago
what was the point of the movie? i felt frustated when i finished it and was confused as to why they didnt offer more of the real story and instead focused on only 2 main things: the final part of the manhunt and the harvard study. Even the study part felt like information was missing in the end..
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u/Background-Bogy 9d ago
Typical netflix....girl who knows everything, surrounded by men who know nothing, is the hero at the end, poor poor unabomber feel so bad for him please we beg you.....lol next up on netflix movie about girl who murders three children and how to feel bad for her.
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u/Ok-Philosopher-7813 9d ago
I am mostly curious to know if I missed something. The movie says it is about his traumatic experiments and that made him the unabomber. But are the "experiements" really what we see in the movie? Doesn't seem that traumatic or anything. Feels more like he has his ego bruised because people are not "agreeing" with him. Also he is going to the experimental "debates" voluntarily.. I was expecting some bad shit to make someone become a terrorist.
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u/CityLemonPunch 14d ago
A film about an individual who took action, rightly or wrongly, against the perceived architecture and injustices of our world.....reduced to feminist grand standing and platitudes, and all from a fictionalized character that seems to have been constructed to eclipse the main character of the story himself
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5
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u/willtaskerVSbyron 11d ago
Wrongly.
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u/CityLemonPunch 11d ago
"Wrongly" what the hell does that mean
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u/willtaskerVSbyron 11d ago
I thought that was obvious. Blowing people up isn't right. So, "wrongly," not "rightly."
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u/CityLemonPunch 10d ago
To put it bluntly ,I was talking about the fictious feminist bullshit that was injected into this film and you focus on a padantic issue that I included "rightly". ALL points of action in the real world are open for debate, there is no universal "right or wrong" ." Rightly or wrongly" is a tool to put a part of a discusuob aside to focus on another focus.
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u/willtaskerVSbyron 9d ago
Nah, dude. Blowing people up is wrong. If you haven't learned that, I am glad we will never meet. You're more concerned about this movie's apparent feminist agenda (never see Silence of the Lambs - you'll lose your shit) than the mail bombs that maimed and killed. Lol
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u/BrownsBeach 9d ago
The fictional female detective outsmarting the dumb men is very annoying, they have to ruin everything with this nonsense
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u/Braaanchy 5d ago
This was the most boring film I’ve seen recently, not sure why they skipped over the actual Bombing part
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u/bigotechocolate 4d ago
Terrible bad acting. Horrible dialogue. Netflix has become the new lifetime.
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u/thegooniegodard 15d ago
I see no reason to add so many fictionalized aspects and characters to increase the drama in what was already a very interesting case. Worst of all, it's dull. Netflix doing Netflix things. The irony of Ted's manifesto and the biggest streamer...