Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for ‘A House of Dynamite’

Few directors are better at crafting taut thrillers with compelling visuals than Kathryn Bigelow. She did that in the late 80s and early 90s with Near Dark and Point Break, but in the past few decades, more serious fare based on true events or set in a very realistic fictional world has become her specialty. In movies like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow shocked audiences with wide-scope stories and lots of action. Her latest film, Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, has the most serious plot of all as the U.S. government, led by a President played by Idris Elba, must decide how to react to a nuclear missile headed towards Chicago. The entire runtime is non-stop tension, only for the movie to end before the explosion happens. You understandably may have been frustrated by this choice, but it’s actually the perfect ending to a terrifying story.

How Does ‘A House of Dynamite’ End?

A House of Dynamite follows the point of view of several higher-up U.S. government officials. We have a Captain in the White House Situation Room, Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson), a Major in the 59th Missile Defense Battalion, Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos), and Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris), just to name a few. It’s a normal and somewhat dull day, until the unimaginable happens. A missile with a nuclear warhead is launched over the Pacific and headed straight for the United States mainland, with projections showing it hitting Chicago.

Bigelow delivers on the intensity in multiple ways. For one, we are unable to detect where the missile came from, so there is no telling if the enemy is South Korea, Russia, or someone else. We are then meant to relive the 18 minutes of horror over and over again by following how these characters, including Deputy National Security Adviser Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) and STRACOM General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts), react. It isn’t until the latter half of A House of Dynamite that we finally meet the President, fittingly played by Idris Elba. When a GBI aimed at the missile doesn’t connect with its target, POTUS is put in an impossible situation: does he let the missile hit Chicago, killing millions, or does he retaliate against our enemies when we don’t even know who attacked us, which would lead to a devastating nuclear war? Before he can decide, and before we see the mushroom cloud, A House of Dynamite comes to an end.

Kathryn Bigelow Explains Why She Left the Ending Unresolved

The general public doesn’t know what’s happening, with Secretary Baker even calling his own daughter, Caroline (Kaitlyn Dever), in Chicago just to hear her voice one more time, but unable to bring himself to tell his own child that she’s about to die. It’s a soul-crushing choice to let the person you love most die oblivious rather than to let their final moments be filled with terror. As for the audience of A House of Dynamite, we are purposely left out as well, not on the fact of the bomb, but on the aftermath.

This choice wasn’t a cop out, or a failure of storytelling, but a purposeful device from Kathryn Bigelow, who told Netflix:

“I want audiences to leave theaters thinking, ‘OK, 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. But in the meantime, we really are living in a house of dynamite. 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.”

Kathryn Bigelow knew exactly what an audience wanted to see. She’s successfully delivered that before, but in A House of Dynamite, she refuses, and it makes all the difference.

‘A House of Dynamite’ Is More Chilling by Not Following Expectations

Image via Netflix

We’ve seen movies like A House of Dynamite so many times before, whether it be about a terrorist, an alien attack like Independence Day, or a global event such as Deep Impact. The disaster genre has the tropes of meeting higher ups and their families, having a shocking inciting incident occur, then the heroes figuring it out as they fight the bad guys, and in the case of some, as they heroically die. The only death Bigelow gives us is Baker taking his own life in the final act, but even that’s not glamorized. Outside of this, the rest of the movie is like a stage play with more questions than answers.

A House of Dynamite could have done things differently. Perhaps we found out who the attackers were and launched missiles their way. Maybe we could have knocked the missile heading for Chicago down and then watched POTUS and everyone around him celebrate before he gave a rousing speech to the nation. Bigelow could have even let the missile flatten Chicago, then showed America’s resolve in a patriotic rush as we stood tall, ready to fight for freedom. But we’ve seen that so many times, and that ending wouldn’t have stuck in our memory.

A House of Dynamite is not about the aftermath of apocalyptic disaster movies. It’s not aiming to make us feel good or fill us with patriotic pride. Instead, Kathryn Bigelow wants to show us where we’re headed if we’re not careful. She wants us to see that this could happen and how easily mistakes could be made. She stops right before the dynamite goes off in the house, instead letting it hover, paused in time, the end seconds away and unknowable, just like it would be for the victims. Is there any way to stop it, we wonder? That feeling of unresolved anxiety is way more unnerving than expected scenes of CGI destruction.

A House of Dynamite is now streaming on Netflix in the U.S.