A House of Dynamite – seriously?

Luca Fontana

31.10.2025

Translation: Eva Francis

Kathryn Bigelow dissects the complacency of a world that has become used to a state of emergency and asks: what if the unthinkable actually happens? However, there’s a massive catch.

Spoiler alert: This is an opinion piece with spoilers for A House of Dynamite. Watch the movie on Netflix before you read on.

In Kathryn Bigelow’s political thriller A House of Dynamite, the day begins as excruciatingly boring as any other. The sun rises, people drive to work, someone makes a joke about coffee. Even in the highest echelons of American national security, everything seems to follow the same routine as always – briefings, protocols, meetings. The wheel’s turning and turning. Just as it always does.

Until, all of a sudden, something bursts the bubble of boring normality: a nuclear warhead appears over the Pacific Ocean, heading for Chicago, Illinois. There are only 19 minutes left until impact. Ten million people will probably not live to see the evening of this perfectly normal day. They just don’t know it – and they probably never will.

So what now?

19 minutes to the end

Director Bigelow sets the scene like clockwork that slowly falls apart. She shows the same 19 minutes, the same catastrophe, one after the other from the perspective of three characters.

First from Olivia Walker’s (Rebecca Ferguson) who’s highly focused and ice-cold until the unthinkable becomes reality. Then from the perspective of the security advisor (Gabriel Basso), whose self-confidence crumbles by the minute. And finally from the perspective of the president himself (Idris Elba), who’s more of a good-hearted mascot than a strong leader.

The concept sounds rather theoretical, almost too methodical. But Bigelow infuses it with life. She shows the small dramas between the big decisions – the worried looks, the shaky hands as they search through pages and pages to find the right course of action, the quiet moments of panic when someone realises that no plan, no training, no drill in the world can prepare you for this moment.

The result is a puzzle of helplessness. A system that pretends to have everything under control and is left to watch as that control crumbles. Bigelow and her author Noah Oppenheim mercilessly show us how fragile our apparent order is and how deceptive the routines and protocols are that we rely on.

And most of all, how dangerous it is to take surviving for granted.

This house of dynamite the title refers to isn’t just a cliché. It’s our world. A world crammed to the rafters with explosives, political tensions, nuclear arsenals, selfishness and coincidences. And we’re sitting right in the middle of it, sipping our coffee and thinking the smoke detector will take care of things if a fire breaks out.

As if a goddamn smoke detector could save us.

And then: nothing.

Up to this point, the movie works perfectly. The tension is unbearable. The house full of dynamite is still standing, but every second feels like the last. It makes me realise we’d hardly be prepared for such a scenario – for the end of all things, managed by exhausted people in poorly lit offices.

After all the build-up, all that’s left is to resolve the tension. To show the impact – or the non-impact.

But then....nothing happens.

Nothing!?

Yep, you read that right. After the third 19 minutes, the movie just ends. With the same cliff hanger it ended the two times before. The countdown stops, the picture goes black. No bang. No smoke. Nothing. Only the credits. Know that feeling when you want to sneeze, but can’t? That’s what the ending of this movie does to you.

Of course Bigelow’s done this on purpose. She knows how much it’ll drive us crazy. She’s an Oscar winner and she directed Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker. She knows exactly how to create tension and escalation. Ans she’s punishing us with emptiness – to shock us, provoke us and force us to think. We’re supposed to come up with our own theory of how it might end.

I get all that. But in my opinion, she’s making her life too easy.

The brave thing to do

Yes, we live in a house full of dynamite. But if you’re making such a radical claim, you have to follow through by showing us what happens when there’s no stopping the dynamite – or at least how it could be stopped. Bigelow does neither. She goes for the silent shock. For the intellectual approach of «I’m not giving you the ending, that’s the point I’m making».

But – and this is the massive catch – a movie needs an ending. Whatever it is, there has to be a consequence. An idea. A statement. A punch line. Without an ending, this movie collapses just like all the security protocols, and we end up with nothing but an itchy spot that we can’t reach, no matter how hard we try.

What’s your take? Does the shock moment fulfil its purpose or do you agree that the film needs an ending? Share your opinion in the comments. Speaking of which, we also talk about this topic in the latest episode of our A Tech Affair podcast (in Swiss German).

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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