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Netflix's newest true-crime drama, "Unabomber," landed on the streamer Friday, offering a dual-timeline portrait of Ted Kaczynski — the Harvard-educated mathematician turned domestic terrorist responsible for a nearly two-decade bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995. Directed by Danish filmmaker Janus Metz Pedersen, known for his work on Disney+'s "Andor" and the biopic "Borg vs. McEnroe," the film was written by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves.
Rising actor Jacob Tremblay, best known for his breakout performances in "Room" and "Wonder," takes on the demanding lead role, playing Kaczynski as a socially isolated 16-year-old prodigy navigating Harvard University in the late 1950s. To prepare, Tremblay reportedly studied recordings of the real Kaczynski to capture his distinctive voice and mannerisms, telling Netflix he was struck to learn just how brilliant Kaczynski had been as a teenager before his descent into violence.
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The film's first timeline centers on Kaczynski's involvement in a series of controversial, CIA-funded psychological experiments conducted by Harvard professor Henry Murray, played by Russell Crowe in his first major role for Netflix. Those experiments — later linked to the broader MK-Ultra program — form the psychological backbone of the film's exploration of how Kaczynski's isolation and mistreatment as a student ultimately shaped the man he became. Annabelle Wallis co-stars as Christiana Morgan, Murray's academic partner and co-director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic.
The second timeline jumps forward to the mid-1990s, following FBI agent Joanne Miller, played by Shailene Woodley, as she leads what became one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in the bureau's history. Alexander Ludwig, Steven Ogg, and Marc Menchaca round out the supporting cast.
The casting of Tremblay — a former child star now 18 — as one of America's most infamous criminals has generated some discussion ahead of the film's release, with director Metz defending the choice by pointing to the sensitivity and intelligence Tremblay brings to portraying Kaczynski's formative, more sympathetic years before his radicalization. Early critical response has focused heavily on Tremblay's committed transformation and the film's ambitious structural choice to frame Kaczynski's story as psychological tragedy rather than a straightforward crime procedural, though some reviewers have questioned whether the dual-timeline approach dilutes the tension of the manhunt narrative.
"Unabomber" arrives as part of a broader wave of true-crime content revisiting the Kaczynski case, following Netflix's own docuseries "Unabomber: In His Own Words" and Discovery's anthology series "Manhunt." The 97-minute, R-rated film is now streaming globally on Netflix.
