Kathryn Bigelow‘s white-knuckle nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite blasts its way to Netflix on October 25, 2025, instantly becoming one of the must-see cinematic home-viewing events of the year. Bigelow’s first film in eight years, A House of Dynamite, stars Rebecca Ferguson as Olivia Walker, a high-ranking member of the United States’ Situation Room who must use her intelligence team and national resources to stop an intercontinental ballistic missile from striking the country in under 20 minutes.
Featuring a tremendous supporting cast that includes Idris Elba, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos, and more, those who missed A House of Dynamite in its limited theatrical run need to see what Bigelow has achieved. While slightly repetitive at times, A House of Dynamite is as urgent, exhilarating, and topical as any movie Bigelow has made in her decorated Oscar-winning career.
What Is ‘A House of Dynamite’ About?
Scripted by Noah Oppenheim (Jackie, Zero Day), A House of Dynamite is a throwback real-time thriller that mounts high tension and tightly coiled suspense throughout its 112-minute runtime. The stellar anti-war movie begins in Fort Greely, Alaska, where military commander Daniel Gonzalez (Ramos) notices an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) headed towards the United States without being reported. Once the rocket is deemed a genuine threat and not a test, senior crisis management officer Olivia Walker (Ferguson) coordinates a response in the United States’ Situation Room.
As Walker and her intelligence team deduce that they have roughly 18 minutes until the rocket strikes Chicago, panic ensues as they rush to orchestrate a plan. Walker coordinates communications with the U.S. President (Elba) and Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Basso), who disagree on how to respond. Meanwhile, Gonzalez’s attempt to shoot the rocket down with two anti-ICBM rockets fails, creating more chaos and uncertainty.
With millions of American lives at stake, the consequences couldn’t be higher or more dramatic. At another military base, Senior Air Force General Anthony Brady urges POTUS to retaliate with their own nuclear attack, while Baerington warns against such tactics. Unclear about who is responsible for the attack, the senior leaders must decide to hold Russia or North Korea accountable, leading to an incredibly intense and highly immersive finale that viewers won’t forget anytime soon.
‘A House of Dynamite’ Marks a Rousing Return To Form for Kathryn Bigelow
As if true cinephiles needed a reason to watch the latest Kathryn Bigelow movie, the first female director in history to win an Academy Award for Best Director (The Hurt Locker), A House of Dynamite marks a return to form. A supremely talented filmmaker who almost always tackles timely, topical, and vitally important subjects, Bigelow builds on the legacy she has carved with such war movies as The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Her ability to set up a scenario, expertly ratchet tension and suspense, and deliver a knockout ending is second to none, and A House of Dynamite is yet another example of her mastery that no Netflix user should miss.
The Hurt Locker was a hauntingly intimate portrayal of a bomb-diffusing soldier (Jeremy Renner) who struggled mightily to re-assimilate into society following multiple tours of duty in Iraq and found more comfort and solace on the battlefield. Zero Dark Thirty recreated, with the utmost veracity, the United States’ dogged hunt for Osama bin Laden following the tragic events of 9/11. Both were powerful prestige pictures, featuring Oscar-caliber talent above and below the line, with few filmmakers brave enough to tackle such complex real-world issues and turn them into top-flight entertainment.
Bigelow conveys the urgency of the incoming rocket by framing A House of Dynamite in real time. There’s a harrowing ticking-clock scenario so visceral and guttural that it will make the squeamish queasy, which is precisely the response one would feel in reality. Such urgent immersion is bolstered by BAFTA-winning cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who has not only worked with Bigelow on The Hurt Locker and Detroit, but also with Paul Greengrass on such gritty, hand-held movies based on true stories as Green Zone and Captain Phillips.
It’s also worth noting Oppenheim’s screenplay, which divulges bits of information in drips and drabs that feed into unpredictable twists and turns. While some of the military base scenes feel redundant at times, Oppenheim’s previous journalistic experience as the President of NBC News comes in handy as the movie tackles its geopolitical themes.
‘A House of Dynamite’ Deserves To Be Mentioned Alongside ‘Dr. Strangelove’ & ‘Fail Safe’
When watching the tightly crafted and thoroughly engaging A House of Dynamite, it’s impossible not to think of the two greatest anti-nuclear war movies ever made, both released in 1964. The first to be released was Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a scathing satire about the brink of nuclear war during the height of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Although Kubrick used humor to lessen the blow and poke fun at such a sobering existential subject, the war room scenes feel akin to the Situation Room scenes in A House of Dynamite. Tonally, Bigelow’s latest film aligns more with Fail Safe, the excellent Sidney Lumet nuclear war film released 10 months after Dr. Strangelove. Fail Safe imagines a scenario in which a nuclear missile is accidentally launched toward Russia due to a series of technical errors, causing the U.S. President (Henry Fonda) to scramble a response and allay international fears.
60 years later, similar international conflicts exist, while technology has advanced dramatically. Bigelow takes the blueprint left behind by Kubrick and Lumet and uses it to tell a modern-day anti-nuclear war movie that feels every bit as urgent and immediate as Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe. The real-time framing heightens the tension and suspense, and the superb performances across the board give A House of Dynamite an unmatched authenticity. Whether it achieves as much Oscar glory as Bigelow’s previous war movies, A House of Dynamite is an explosive reminder of the filmmaker’s immense talents. A House of Dynamite is streaming on Netflix.
- Release Date
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October 3, 2025
- Runtime
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113 minutes
- Director
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Kathryn Bigelow
- Producers
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Brian Bell, Greg Shapiro