Perhaps the biggest mark against Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, helmed by the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow, is its ending. The political thriller tracks the U.S. government and military’s response to an impending nuclear missile strike, launched by an unknown country, showcasing the complex processes and decision-making in this possibly futile situation.
Spoilers ahead for A House of Dynamite.
However, A House of Dynamite‘s ambiguous ending does not aim to satisfy its audiences. After the timeline resets twice, tracking three sets of characters in the half hour or leading up to detonation, the movie ends before the missile actually hits Chicago, and POTUS (Idris Elba) makes any official decision onscreen about what the country’s response will be.
A House of Dynamite stands with a 78% Tomatometer and 77% Popcornmeter, indicating that critics and audiences have largely accepted its attempt to focus on people’s visceral reactions in this intense situation. It effectively shows how POTUS is in an impossible situation, and must choose between accepting an entire city’s loss or risking kicking off the end of the world.
Now, Bigelow has responded to audiences’ division over the movie’s potentially frustrating conclusion, affirming that it reflects her intended message. Bigelow tells Netflix: “I want audiences to leave theaters thinking, ‘OK, what do we do now?‘” It is a slight swerve from a cautionary tale ending on a bleak note to one with little definite ending, to motivate people to avoid this situation in reality.
Bigelow continues:
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.
It has also been emphasized that A House of Dynamite is all about showing how even the most qualified people aren’t really prepared to deal with the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons. In this, A House of Dynamite does succeed, showing how government officials handle everything professionally but are still in shock. Screenwriter Noah Oppenheim tells Netflix:
One of the big things that we wanted to showcase in making this film is how little time there would be for the United States government, or any government really, to respond to a nuclear attack. During that same 18 minutes, we wanted to show what was happening throughout the entire apparatus of the government.
A House of Dynamite has been praised for its absolutely terrifying portrayal of the potential domino effect of multiple countries possessing a nuclear arsenal. The fictional POTUS deliberates on retaliating when his advisors stress to him that more missiles could be coming, but this would cause casualties elsewhere on an unprecedented scale.
The Netflix thriller has certainly started a conversation, especially when the Pentagon itself has criticized A House of Dynamite for allegedly saying that America’s missile defense system is much less likely to be successful than it actually is. But A House of Dynamite has different priorities, as Bigelow wanted to stress that the world’s nuclear stockpile must be reduced regardless.
- Release Date
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October 10, 2025
- Runtime
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113 minutes
- Director
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Kathryn Bigelow
- Writers
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Noah Oppenheim
- Producers
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Greg Shapiro, Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Oppenheim
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Rebecca Ferguson
Captain Olivia Walker