"A House of Dynamite" Director Defends the Netflix Film's Divisive, Abrupt Ending: 'What Do We Do Now?' Benjamin VanHooseOctober 29, 2025 at 5:07 AM 0 Eros Hoagland/Netflix Tracy Letts and Gbenga Akinnagbe in "A House of Dynamite" Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim explain why ...
- - "A House of Dynamite" Director Defends the Netflix Film's Divisive, Abrupt Ending: 'What Do We Do Now?'
Benjamin VanHooseOctober 29, 2025 at 5:07 AM
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Eros Hoagland/Netflix
Tracy Letts and Gbenga Akinnagbe in "A House of Dynamite" -
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim explain why A House of Dynamite ends the way it does
Some critics and viewers have expressed qualms with the abrupt, ambiguous conclusion
Oppenheim said the ending is meant to be a "call to attention and an invitation to a conversation"
Warning: This article contains spoilers for A House of Dynamite, now streaming on Netflix.
A House of Dynamite director Kathryn Bigelow is standing by her film's divisive ending.
In the anxiety-inducing thriller, written by Noah Oppenheim, audiences see the chain of command and what steps might be taken if the United States detected a nuclear missile fired in its direction.
An ensemble cast — from Rebecca Ferguson and Anthony Ramos to Idris Elba as POTUS — depicts a stressful series of events, inside the White House Situation Room and beyond. After showing multiple perspectives, the film cuts to the credits without showing the president's decision under pressure or any impact of the bomb on Chicago.
Some have decried the ambiguous ending as anticlimactic. In a review of the film, Rolling Stone's David Fear wrote that the ending is "designed to avoid resolution and cause moviegoers to stifle screams of 'Wait, seriously?' " NPR's John Powers, meanwhile, wrote the "script's ending is a tad too oblique for my taste."
Eros Hoagland/Netflix
Anthony Ramos in "A House of Dynamite"
Writer Fred Kaplan, however, warmed up to the abrupt ending, writing in a review for Slate: "At first I groaned a little, seeing this as a cop-out. But the more I thought about it, the more I concluded that this was the only sensible ending."
On social media platforms like X, some viewers labeled it the "worst ending ever" or claimed it had "no payoff."
Bigelow, known for films like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, told Netflix's Tudum that she hopes the ending serves as a conversation starter.
"I want audiences to leave theaters thinking, 'Okay, what do we do now?' This is a global issue, and of course I hope against hope that maybe we reduce the nuclear stockpile someday," she said.
Netflix
Rebecca Ferguson in "A House of Dynamite"
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"But in the meantime we really are living in a house of dynamite," continued Bigelow, 73. "I felt it was so important to get that information out there, so we could start a conversation. That's the explosion we're interested in — the conversation people have about the film afterward."
Screenwriter Oppenheim told Decider that the unanswered questions about what the president decides and whether the missile detonates aren't the point of the film.
"I do have answers in my head to both, but it's not relevant to the issues we're trying to raise," he told the outlet. "The first [issue] being should one person have the power to decide the fate of all mankind, with little preparation and only minutes to decide, while simultaneously running for his (or her) life? That should already be terrifying enough, regardless of what happens next."
He echoes that the ending is a "call to attention and an invitation to a conversation."
"No matter what final outcome you imagine, you've already seen a horror unfold. And in the real world, these weapons and all the processes you've just seen are still lurking in the background of our lives," said Oppenheim. "Are we comfortable with that reality or should we do something about it?"
A House of Dynamite is now on Netflix.
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