Inspired by true events, the psychological crime drama traces Ted Kaczynski’s path from Harvard mathematics prodigy to the domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber. The film alternates between two timelines: Kaczynski’s formative years at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the FBI’s years-long manhunt that finally closed in on him in the mid-1990s.
Jacob Tremblay plays the young Ted Kaczynski, a 16-year-old intellectual standout whose isolation and brilliance make him a target for recruitment into a controversial series of psychological experiments. Russell Crowe portrays Professor Henry A. Murray, the Harvard psychologist whose study subjected undergraduate participants—including Kaczynski—to intense, personally abusive interrogations designed to measure responses to extreme stress. Subjects wrote detailed essays outlining their worldviews and personal philosophies, then faced prolonged verbal assaults under bright lights while wired to monitoring equipment. Murray himself later described the sessions as “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive.” Annabelle Wallis co-stars as Christiana Morgan, Murray’s academic partner and co-director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic.
Decades later, the consequences surface when FBI agent Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) leads the investigation into a string of bombings that killed three people and injured 23 between 1978 and 1995. The dual-timeline structure connects the experimental trauma of Kaczynski’s youth to the meticulous, technology-rejecting campaign of terror that followed.
Directed by Janus Metz (Andor) from a screenplay by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves, UNABOMBER is produced by Sophie Cassidy for 2.0 Entertainment in association with MRC. Additional cast includes Alexander Ludwig, Steven Ogg, and Marc Menchaca. First-look images released this week show Tremblay as the teenage Kaczynski opposite Crowe’s Murray, underscoring the film’s focus on the psychological fracture that preceded the violence.
UNABOMBER arrives on Netflix September 25.
