A House of Dynamite has raced to first place on the Netflix top 10 chart, but the new movie’s “horrifying” ending has become a point of contention among viewers. Warning: spoilers ahead!
Right now, all eyes are on Netflix TV, with The Witcher Season 4 set to drop at the end of the month, followed by the anticipated premiere of Stranger Things Season 5 in November. But there are plenty of new movies to watch too, including the political thriller A House of Dynamite.
Directed by Point Break filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, the film stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, and Tracy Letts, and centres on the US government as it formulates an official response to a nuclear missile threat from an unknown opponent.
A House of Dynamite is ultimately about the chilling reality in which the US is under nuclear attack and how it would deal with it, but the structure of the film has sparked a debate online.
Why Netflix fans are criticizing A House of Dynamite ending
You see, A House of Dynamite unfolds in three separate chapters – each covering the same 18-minute window of a nuclear missile threat on Chicago – from the perspectives of the White House Situation Room, the missile defense base, and the President of the US.
This way, it shows each faction’s response to the threat as the clock runs out, meaning none of the character arcs receive full resolution, the missile’s impact remains unseen, and the attacker is never identified.
For many Netflix viewers, this structure and lack of closure has proven frustrating. Over on Reddit, one said that they “hated” the ending, writing, “It feels like it’s going to just jump into the next episode or act or sequel… Definition of anti-climactic.”
“I literally said ‘oh, f**k you’ out loud after they dragged me through the story three times to get to that end,” commented another, while a third added, “First time I’ve seen a movie with three beginnings and zero endings.”
A fourth chimed in, “I just finished it 5 minutes ago and the first words out of my mouth were ‘WHAT THE F**K?’ due to the ending. I’m not a huge fan of movies without a proper ending. I get this was the whole point of the movie, but I was left very disappointed.”
One particular complaint is that many believe the first part was the strongest, leaving viewers frustrated that the other two chapters didn’t match up.
“The first part was intense,” wrote one. “The second part was mind-boggling like why would you go on the hunches. By the third chapter I did not give a f**k about the president personally I was just tired of the same repeated stuff over and over again.”
A second said, “I think it’s good, but not great (and for Bigelow, I tend to expect great), and the ending works for what the movie is trying to do, but the biggest issue is that Part 1 is so f**king electric that it hurts the remainder of the movie which can’t sustain that level.”
Kathryn Bigelow explains why this isn’t the point of the movie
On the other side of the debate, A House of Dynamite fans are jumping in to say these critiques are missing the point of the new movie, something Bigelow and writer Noah Oppenheim have addressed.
At a panel held after a screening of the Netflix film, Bigelow said (via Yahoo) she always knew she wanted to focus on the 18-minute window of time between launch and detonation.
“That came about in our very first conversation, because the timeline would be, and he [Oppenheim] was telling me accurately, about 18 to 19 minutes, depending upon where it was launched from,” she explained.
“I was thinking it would be the Pacific, and I wanted to do it in real time – 18 minutes would be a very short movie… But then what became really important to us was putting the audience in the position of having to make a decision that is potentially catastrophic in 18 minutes.”
Bigelow noted “how short a period of time that is, and how the window of opportunity begins to diminish as you get to the President, who has, in our country, and I believe in other countries, sole authority. There’s nobody else who makes that decision except him.
“And at the time, of course, when he gets the information, the clock is ticking down, he has like maybe two, three minutes to make a decision that is that profound.”
Viewers have been reflecting this sentiment in the comments by defending the ending, with one responding to the following critique: “I was so frustrated that they were seriously considering retaliating against everyone despite having zero idea who was responsible.
“It just seemed unrealistic with that level of uncertainty. They didn’t even have a guess, a hint, of where it came from. None of their justifications made any sense when viewed from that lens…
“One thing this movie made me do, though, is realize that we are turbof**ked if the people in charge of those decisions today, ever have to make them. That’s likely the point of the film, and so while I hated the last two thirds, I have to give it a lot of credit.”
The Redditor replied, “But that IS precisely the point. We have built this entire system that’s run by humans who will never be prepared for the day when and if it comes… It doesn’t matter what happens next because the move is about criticizing why we built and continue to live in the House of Dynamite.”
They went on to highlight that “38% of the world’s population was born after the Cold War – nuclear war has not been the same fear in the modern psyche the way it used to be and I think this movie is arguing that it should be.”
Another simply wrote, “I personally loved the ending. It felt horrifying.”
A House of Dynamite Rotten Tomatoes score
Despite the criticisms, A House of Dynamite has scored 79% from the critics and 77% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Ultimately, any movie that sparks a conversation like this one has is well worth your time, if only to form your own opinion.
As said by CBR, the Netflix movie “serves as a politically thought-provoking film during a tense time when uncertainties about nuclear war persist… However, others who appreciate a real, more definitive ending will certainly feel let down.”
Rolling Stone added, “We never thought we’d say this, but we actually wished that Bigelow had slowed things down a tad, giving these characters room to breathe, and us a chance to know them better before reducing them to ants scurrying around a kicked anthill.”
Elsewhere, NPR described it as “thrilling,” adding that “Bigelow directs with a maestro’s lucid precision, perfectly orchestrating the complicated shifts from person to person, time frame to time frame.”
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