Warning: Spoilers are incoming!
Netflix has released quite a few great movies in 2025, and I've been all over the upcoming movies guide, ensuring I don't miss a single one. This led me to check out Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite, which I assumed I would love. As someone who loved The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, I was thrilled to be streaming this with my Netflix subscription, but I found myself disappointed by the movie's end.
A House of Dynamite is a fictional movie that chronicles the real-time response of key figures in the United States government as a nuclear missile flies toward the country. We see several different perspectives on how people react at multiple levels of government, but I felt like I would've easily been ok with leaving at least one out just to see the story move forward a bit further.
A House Of Dynamite Ended Before The Most Interesting Part
I agreed with what many critics had to say about A House of Dynamite, especially the one who talked about the odd ending. So much of the movie revolves around the United States and this missile coming to the country, and yet the movie ends before we actually see it make landfall.
I'm not saying I needed some Terminator 2: Judgement Day apocalypse scene or one of the greatest explosions in cinematic history, but A House Of Dynamite ends after repeated speculation that the nuclear device launched could be defective and end up being a dud. The movie ends before we know what became of Chicago, or really, how the United States responded.
Part of the intrigue of A House of Dynamite is that it's a grounded take on the events that would occur if a nuclear missile hit U.S. soil. And yet, I feel as though the movie stops short of showing what the next steps would be when that happened, and how the United States continues to operate from that point onward. In my mind, the bunker was where it was really going to get interesting, and we only got to see people approach it.
I Would Love To See A Sequel Dealing With The Aftermath
Part of me understands that A House of Dynamite didn't have the budget to turn into a film about a potential worldwide nuclear war, but man, why make an entire movie about the events leading up to one? If a sequel to this happened, it may go down on the list of best War movies ever made.
As such, I'm making a plea for Netflix and Kathryn Bigelow to consider a follow-up to A House of Dynamite. If there's a chance we can get some sort of grounded look at how the United States government would operate post-nuclear disaster, and how others would respond, it would be the perfect follow-up to a movie that was already very good.
I also think it's possible to do without blowing the budget on special effects, similar to what was done in this movie. So much of what happens in A House of Dynamite is tense conversations and people looking at projections on screens. As long as the tension is still there, and we're getting a grounded and realistic look at what a situation like this could look like, I'm 100% in.
A House of Dynamite is available to stream on Netflix. After watching, be sure to check out some of the other shows on Netflix worth watching right now, because there's a growing list for those who haven't been keeping up!
