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‘Unabomber’ Review: Jacob Tremblay Stuns in a Biopic That Still Can’t Decide If Kaczynski Was Crazy
Confirmed
In Short: Netflix's 'Unabomber' biopic, starring Jacob Tremblay as Theodore Kaczynski, explores the notorious domestic terrorist's youth at Harvard and the FBI's hunt for him.
The film splits into two timelines: one set in the late 1960s, where Tremblay portrays a young Kaczynski struggling to fit in at Harvard, and another in the 1990s, focusing on FBI Agent Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) investigating the Unabomber.
In the earlier timeline, Russell Crowe plays Henry Murray, a psychology professor who subjects Kaczynski to psychological tests, which the film suggests may have contributed to Kaczynski's later radicalization.
However, the film's portrayal of Murray's experiments and their impact on Kaczynski has drawn criticism. IndieWire notes that Kaczynski never accepted the characterization that he was mentally ill, and the film's diagnosis of schizophrenia is not supported by historical records.
ScreenRant observes that while Tremblay's performance as the young Kaczynski is impressive, the film's core story feels like it has an identity problem, failing to fully capture the complexity of Kaczynski's transformation.
The 1990s timeline, which centers on Woodley's FBI agent, is described as a stock role, with the film relying heavily on Tremblay's performance to carry the narrative.
Variety criticizes the film for its simplistic approach, noting that it does not match the intensity of Sharlto Copley's portrayal in the 2021 biopic 'Ted K.
The film's release on Netflix on September 25, 2026, has sparked debate among critics and audiences about the accuracy and impact of its portrayal of Kaczynski's life.
What this adds
The real Kaczynski denied that Murray's experiments had any significant impact on his life.
Background
The film's portrayal of Kaczynski's youth at Harvard is reminiscent of 'A Beautiful Mind,' where Russell Crowe played mathematician John Nash.
Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle and lone wolf terrorism campaign.
What's confirmed
- The film splits into two timelines: one set in the late 1960s, where Tremblay portrays a young Kaczynski struggling to fit in at Harvard, and another in the 1990s, focusing on FBI Agent Joanne Miller (Shailene Woodley) investigating the Unabomber.
- In the earlier timeline, Russell Crowe plays Henry Murray, a psychology professor who subjects Kaczynski to psychological tests, which the film suggests may have contributed to Kaczynski's later radicalization.
- However, the film's portrayal of Murray's experiments and their impact on Kaczynski has drawn criticism. IndieWire notes that Kaczynski never accepted the characterization that he was mentally ill, and the film's diagnosis of schizophrenia is not supported by historical records.
- ScreenRant observes that while Tremblay's performance as the young Kaczynski is impressive, the film's core story feels like it has an identity problem, failing to fully capture the complexity of Kaczynski's transformation.
- The 1990s timeline, which centers on Woodley's FBI agent, is described as a stock role, with the film relying heavily on Tremblay's performance to carry the narrative.
- Variety criticizes the film for its simplistic approach, noting that it does not match the intensity of Sharlto Copley's portrayal in the 2021 biopic 'Ted K.
- The film's release on Netflix on September 25, 2026, has sparked debate among critics and audiences about the accuracy and impact of its portrayal of Kaczynski's life.
What's still developing
- But “Unabomber” goes too far, inventing a diagnosis for Kaczynski inside Murray’s experiment that turns a seriously disputed criminal and philosophical question into a tidy answer that doesn’t fit the known facts.
- Positioned as a sort of Columbo -like inverted detective story, Unabomber splits into two timelines, first showing a young Theodore Kaczynski (Jacob Tremblay) in the late 1960s at Harvard, and then the manhunt for him starting from 1994 with the death of his penultimate victim, and into 1995 and 1996 when he was captured.
- The later timeline, which winds around the past like a snake, centers on Shailene Woodley's FBI Agent Joanne Miller, who is investigating her belief that anti-industrialization loner Ted Kaczynski is the notorious Unabomber, who killed 3 people and injured 23 in a series of bombings over 18 years that targeted key figures in technology, academia, and aviation.
- The second, later timeline essentially makes Woodley's FBI agent Unabomber 's answer to Clarice Starling, and shows how the terrorist's reign of terror ended.
- It's a bold choice, certainly, but even without the current climate, Unabomber 's core story is an interesting one, which is clearly what drew Andor director Janus Metz Pedersen to the project.
- Over the course of a surprisingly brief 97 minutes, Unabomber seems to want you to question whether the experiments might have caused the later crimes, which frustratingly misses the mark and feels like a movie with an identity problem.
- Unabomber 's earlier sequences set in Harvard are – ironically, given Russell Crowe's involvement – not hugely unlike A Beautiful Mind, as Kaczynski struggles to fit in at Harvard, explores his challenging ideas, and finds what he believes is his purpose.
- There's obviously a major difference, because John Nash's paranoid schizophrenia was very different from Kaczynski's social difficulties, but the parallel comes in the portrait of bright minds that don't quite fit with their surroundings.
- Unlike A Beautiful Mind, Unabomber explores the casual, devastating effect of putting such a mind under duress in order to prove that "all men can be broken." Tremblay's performance as the young Kaczynski is impressive in its detachment: He plays him a little like Aidan Gallagher's Number Five in The Umbrella Academy - a burdened mind and an isolated outsider.
- Never mind that Kaczynski himself has said that the study, conducted by psychology professor and sometime government operative Henry Murray, didn’t have much effect on his life.
- Unabomber presupposes that it did, that Murray’s cruel (and later condemned) experiment in breaking down the philosophical principles of test subjects, stoked a rage — at academia, at technology, at universities — so fierce that Kaczynski later decided to enact his revenge.
- Unabomber The Bottom Line A faint sketch of a killer as a young man.