28th October 2025 This unconventional nuclear thriller does something rare in movies * What follows are some thoughts about A House of Dynamite (Netflix). * This is not a review as such, but the re…
I watched it Sunday because the premise sounded interesting.
I enjoyed the way it showed the difficulty of making massively consequencial decisions while simultaneously evacuating yourself, trying to listen to advisors over the chaos of themselves evacuating, thinking of your own loved ones, and staving off jingoist pressure. Had some great cast and good writing.
But I left feeling disappointed. The anthology format added absolutely nothing to the story, instead made me bored hearing identical lines over again for the 2nd or 3rd time. Then there were multiple completely superfluous characters and storylines. Maybe some lost original script gave them meaning?
It feels like Netflix hired a good cast and crew, had a good script. Then cut the budget by 2/3 when filming started. So they just asked AI cut to hack the story to a stub, and then edited their footage into 3 angles to triple the run time and call it a feature film.
As an aside, it fuels the liberal fantasy of a working federal government that hasn’t been looted by billionaires.
I watched it Sunday because the premise sounded interesting.
I enjoyed the way it showed the difficulty of making massively consequencial decisions while simultaneously evacuating yourself, trying to listen to advisors over the chaos of themselves evacuating, thinking of your own loved ones, and staving off jingoist pressure. Had some great cast and good writing.
But I left feeling disappointed. The anthology format added absolutely nothing to the story, instead made me bored hearing identical lines over again for the 2nd or 3rd time. Then there were multiple completely superfluous characters and storylines. Maybe some lost original script gave them meaning?
It feels like Netflix hired a good cast and crew, had a good script. Then cut the budget by 2/3 when filming started. So they just asked AI cut to hack the story to a stub, and then edited their footage into 3 angles to triple the run time and call it a feature film.
As an aside, it fuels the liberal fantasy of a working federal government that hasn’t been looted by billionaires.