KATHRYN BIGELOW'S 'A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE' AIN'T 'ARMAGEDDON'—AND THAT'S THE POINT

The setup to Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite is devilishly simple: one missile, zero answers, and a nation full of people with just enough authority to make things worse. Bigelow’s first film in seven years turns that premise into a two-hour anxiety spiral disguised as a thriller. It’s all chain-of-command chatter, flashing screens, and coffee-fueled decision-making—exactly the brand of procedural panic Bigelow does best.

Bigelow can make a movie like this because she understands the appeal and awe of power. She depicts these powerful spaces with elegant establishing shots and smooth camera moves suggesting control, calm, and pure claustrophobia. What we have in the end isn't a bombastic end-of-days flick, but an examination of authority and professionalism and their limits. Yet, unlike the Dr. Strangelove's of the world, A House of Dynamite doesn't present a world where everyone in charge is completely incompetent (like that would ever happen). Instead it asks: What if everyone follows orders and does their job really well and everything still goes to shit?

We Built a House and Filled it with Dynamite.

Kathryn Bigelow doesn’t make disaster movies. That's clear. In her new film, the world slides toward ruin—or maybe it already has—and we’re just catching the edge of the chaos. The narrative follows the 18–20 minutes after a nuclear missile of unknown origin sweeps toward Chicago, forcing multiple wings of the U.S. government into scramble mode.

The threat level jumps to Defcon 1, and so does the movie, and the cross-cutting between various parties issuing emergency orders and assessing the situation in acronym-heavy jargon begins. Watching high-ranking officials gravely discussing potential death rates, possible motives, and likely bad actors that may be responsible—could be Russia, could be North Korea, could be anyone; the true origin is never made clear.

What is clear is Bigelow's a pro. The Oscar-winning filmmaker specializes in profile-in-courage portraits of professionalism and thrillers that shred even the most steel-belted nervous systems. And she's completely in her element with this one, showcasing just how easy it might be for a rogue power to launch an attack on the United States. And for the first 30 or so minutes of the exercise in extreme what-if–ism, you genuinely feel your blood pressure spiking.

However, the film doesn’t offer much closure.

We watch a few overlapping povs: the Situation Room led by Rebecca Ferguson’s Captain Olivia Walker, the missile-defense team with Anthony Ramos’s Major Daniel Gonzalez, and the President, played with exactly the level of charisma you'd expect from Idris Elba, all making the ultimate call. Each lens delivers the same nightmare: a missile is headed our way, the origin is unknown, the impact is impending. What should we do?

Bigelow stretches those tens of minutes to feature length, compressing fear into high-definition stasis. We see operators repeat the same lines, press the same buttons, and exchange the same warnings. The camera doesn’t flinch. It holds until the rhythm of normal lives becomes indistinguishable from the rhythm of impending catastrophe while disparate groups of people just try to do their jobs.

19 Minutes to Impact.

This film isn’t about heroism. It’s about systems. The chain of command, the national defense apparatus, the protocols—all feel both immense and paper-thin. That’s not weakness. That’s realism. According to Bigelow, it’s what already defines our world. And the real terror: powerful people acting exactly the way the system taught them, even when the system is broken.

Elba’s President is both monolith and man. He sits at the apex, yet every shot pulls back to show how small one human is under that helmet of absolute authority. It’s less about what he does than what he must carry. And what makes it terrifying is how believable it all is.

Ferguson’s Walker carries the film’s emotional core; while the generals argue strategy, she watches lives and protocols blur. Her tension is silent. There’s a scene where she stares at the screen and asks aloud, “Who fired it?” The camera lingers long enough to trap us in the question. Meanwhile, all involved are simply professionals diagnosing an unknown threat that can’t be cured.

One of the most quietly devastating scenes comes when a FEMA employee, Cathy, is shuffled from her office, told a car is waiting for her—she’s been chosen for evacuation. Another worker mutters, “Why her?” and for a moment, no one looks up. Soon after, we see busloads of people being driven toward an underground bunker, few of their faces recognizable to us, the audience.

The moment sticks because it breaks the illusion of collective survival. It reminds us that every emergency plan already assumes some won’t make it. So watching Cathy vanish into safety feels less like rescue than erasure. I thought of all those left behind, including Cathy's own co-workers. And it made me wonder who would even know what’s happening if this were real. Definitely not my nonessential ass.

I Always Thought Just Being Ready Was the Point.

Watching A House of Dynamite now almost feels like watching the news. Not because it predicted something, but because the film captures how we already live. Nuclear war isn’t suspense; it’s background noise. The world isn’t ending tomorrow, it’s always currently ending, that ending is just being postponed minute by minute.

I found myself thinking of every headline I've scrolled past without clicking. And realized while watching how easy it is to used to threats. And that numbness is the film’s breakaway. Ordinary lives becoming extraordinary only because they endure.

A House of Dynamite is not a war epic. It’s not a hero’s quest. It’s a hand-on-the-button panic attack disguised as command-center drama. Bigelow basically built the architecture of anxiety and invited us inside. And by the end, we’re not given the explosive reconciliation one might expect. Instead, we leave not sure if it ended badly—or if it ended at all.

It's obvious by the film's flaccid reception that those who invested their time in watching were expecting it to culminate in a big, big boom. Literally. But Bigelow, wisely if you ask me, decides not to indulge in the spectacle of violence and destruction, knowing full well that her audience’s anticipation of the inevitable is far more frightening than what she might be able to present.

And sure, the film might not tell us anything particularly new (surely we all know that nuclear weapons are terrifying), but it’s delivered so deftly, it’s difficult to care. If only all cautionary tales could be this brilliantly entertaining.

4/5 ★: A tense, white-knuckle comeback for Kathryn Bigelow.