PLOT: A Harvard student becomes the Unabomber after psychological experiments. Years later, an FBI agent’s pursuit reveals how his past shaped his deadly campaign that killed 3 and injured 23 from 1978 to 1995.
REVIEW: Among several big-ticket news stories from my youth, I remember the day authorities caught Ted Kaczynski, the paranoid schizophrenic known as the Unabomber. You couldn’t flip through the channels without seeing his face staring back at you with hollow eyes. His arrest felt like a small victory in an unjust world, the terror he wrought finally laid to rest.
When I heard Janus Metz (Andor, True Detective) would tell Kaczynski’s story with Jacob Tremblay (Wildwood, Room) in the lead role, I became intrigued. What Janus’ film teaches us about the man behind the mail-bombing mayhem is deeply disturbing, tragic, and complex in ways I did not expect. People often say villains are made, not born, and in the case of Ted Kaczynski, I think they’re right.
Tremblay plays Kaczynski with a chilling unease that takes him from an anti-social wallflower to a vindictive hotbed of misplaced emotions within the span of a few months. I’m not here to defend Kaczynski by any means. Still, what Professor Henry Murray (Russell Crowe) and Christina Morgan (Annabelle Wallis) did to him was immoral and disturbing, and it could have been what pushed him over the edge. In the film, the academic duo leads an experimental and unchecked debate program that effectively uses torture to study emotional responses in young men.
While Kaczynski thinks he’s part of some grand experiment that will earn him a seat at Harvard’s table in the years to come, he’s being manipulated, the walls around his heart crumbling and turning to dust with each demoralizing argument. The movie makes you stop and think: What if these people had helped Ted instead of pushing him to the ragged edge? Would he have been “activated?” Would he have become the Unabomber?
Meanwhile, Shailene Woodley plays Joanne Miller, the officer at the heart of Kaczynski’s eventual arrest. Woodley plays Miller like an immovable object who trusts her gut more than most. Woodley’s performance is expressive, serious, and oddly, subtle. She refuses to let sleeping dogs lie while a killer runs free, with Woodley carrying the burden of lingering questions in her face and body language.
Crowe is a treat as Professor Henry Murray, an aging academic with delusions of grandeur who uses Ted’s desire for knowledge and belonging against him. Russell plays Murray like a snake in the grass, forever pushing Ted’s buttons to discover what breaks him. Meanwhile, Annabelle Wallis is delightfully alluring as Christina Morgan, Murray’s project partner and paramour. She cares for Ted, but her inability to persuade Murray to end his experiments ultimately leads to Ted’s undoing. When you couple that with Ted quietly becoming infatuated with her, Morgan inadvertently contributes to Ted’s dissociation from the world around him.
I’ve not seen Tremblay in a role anywhere close to this. His evolution from timid genius to one-person revolution against society is disturbing and hypnotic in equal measure. There’s a point in the film where Tremblay’s performance goes from insecure to commanding, rapturing the attention of anyone in his orbit, which is remarkable. The darkness that washes over him is haunting. I don’t feel sympathy for Ted necessarily, but I do think he was taken advantage of, not given the right tools to address his mental illnesses. If someone had genuinely tried to help him instead of feeding his intricate mind with lies and insults, the Unabomber might not have existed.
Overall, Unabomber is a fascinating portrait of a killer whose ideologies are as twisted as his mind. If the film stumbles anywhere, it’s in the moments when tension leaves the room, allowing you to breathe. I understand the need for a respite, but I found myself wanting to be suffocated. Structurally, the shift between Ted’s early years and his eventual capture is seamless and well-executed. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Unabomber, but when the credits rolled, I found myself riveted by Metz’s take on one of North America’s most notorious madmen.
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