Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Here’s the deal: the only way you’ll enjoy 2026 thriller Unabomber is by treating it as a fictional film loosely based on real events because, let’s get real, this is not a documentary. As a non-American viewer, I wasn’t even familiar with the real-life case, so after watching the movie, I did some reading. Turns out, director Janus Metz, along with writers Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves, takes quite a few creative liberties to tweak the story and make things a teeny bit more dramatic.
The film opens with a 1994 explosion that kills an advertising executive after he opens a package delivered by mail. The incident is reported on the news as the work of “the so-called Unabomber,” who has been blamed for similar explosions over the previous 16 years. Shailene Woodley plays FBI agent Joanne Miller, who uncovers a promising lead matching the perpetrator’s profile, a former Harvard graduate, although her colleagues aren’t convinced by her theory. Meanwhile, flashbacks take us to a young Ted Kaczynski (Jacob Tremblay), a Harvard undergraduate who participates in a series of experiments conducted by Professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe) between 1959 and 1962.
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Unabomber is only partly a thriller. Most of the film attempts to build a psychological profile of a young Ted Kaczynski, the man behind the series of bombings, and explore how his years at Harvard might have changed him. A shy, lonely math major, Ted starts out as a shy conformist and lacking much individuality. He is in complete awe of Professor Henry Murray and signs up for monitored debates as part of an experiment. Except his opponent, an older student, turns out to be unexpectedly aggressive and disparaging, constantly making personal attacks and breaking the rules.
Over the course of these debates, Ted learns to hit back. He becomes more opinionated, develops his own stoic viewpoints and gradually transforms into someone very different from the timid teenager we first meet. Jacob Tremblay sharply portrays this metamorphosis, affectingly changing from an under-confident sophomore into someone increasingly assertive and sure of himself. It’s as if a calf grows into a fuming bull in front of your eyes. And it’s this simmering rage that continues to drive Ted over the years, eventually turning him violently against the system. The film suggests that these encounters at Harvard didn’t just change Ted, they also broke something inside him.
But as far as the story goes, Unabomber ultimately feels like a half-baked attempt at understanding Ted Kaczynski’s psyche as a dreaded domestic terrorist, because it focuses almost entirely on these debate sessions overseen by the egotistical Henry Murray. What about the decades in between? What about the period when Ted became a professor himself?
Even the FBI investigation feels unsatisfactory because we essentially join it during the final lap, when the agents are already inches away from identifying their culprit. What leads had they been chasing for nearly two decades? What kept the investigation going for so long? These omissions feel particularly strange when the film itself makes a big show by declaring the hunt for the Unabomber one of the longest and most expensive investigations in FBI history.
Unabomber eventually wraps up with the tense final stages of the FBI’s covert operation to catch and arrest Ted Kaczynski, with their carefully laid plans nearly jeopardized by the media. It makes for a reasonably gripping finale, even if the journey getting there feels incomplete.
Overall, Unabomber is a decent one-time watch, especially for viewers who don’t know much about the case. Just remember to treat it as a fictionalized account inspired by real events rather than a criminal history lesson.
Rating: 6 on 10. Stream Unabomber on Netflix.
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