Jacob Tremblay Takes On His Darkest Transformation Yet
Jacob Tremblay has been growing up in front of us for more than a decade, and his latest role may be the sharpest break yet from the kid audiences first met in Room and Wonder. In Netflix’s new drama UNABOMBER, Tremblay plays a young Ted Kaczynski before the Harvard prodigy became the domestic terrorist whose mail-bombing campaign terrorized the United States for nearly two decades.
The film arrives on Netflix September 25 and runs 1 hour 38 minutes. Directed by Janus Metz and written by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves, the story moves between Kaczynski’s formative years at Harvard and the later FBI investigation that ultimately closes in on him.
Discover More
Keep the INYIM lane open.
Explore the official source and related picks curated around this story.
Some links may be affiliate links. INYIM may earn from qualifying purchases.
The Trailer Starts With The Crime, Then Rewinds To Harvard
Netflix’s trailer opens in 1994 with the deadly consequences of a mail bomb before flashing back to 1958, when Kaczynski is introduced as a gifted teenager entering Harvard. Tremblay plays him as brilliant, awkward and increasingly isolated — not as a cartoon villain, but as a young man whose story is heading somewhere we already know is horrific.
That distinction matters. UNABOMBER is inspired by true events, but the movie is not simply reenacting the crimes. Its central question is how the person who committed them got there, tracing the collision between intelligence, alienation, psychological manipulation and eventually violence.
Russell Crowe Becomes The Professor Who Pushes Him Further
Russell Crowe plays controversial Harvard psychologist Henry Murray, who recruits Kaczynski into a series of psychological experiments. Netflix positions those experiments as a major strand in the film’s portrait of the young mathematician, with the trailer repeatedly returning to Murray’s influence as Kaczynski struggles to fit in and establish his identity.
Director Janus Metz said he was convinced Tremblay was right for the role after seeing his work in 2025’s Sovereign. Tremblay, meanwhile, has said he deliberately avoided approaching Kaczynski as a caricature, instead trying to understand him as a real person before the violence that would define his name.
That makes this a particularly interesting turn for Tremblay. He has spent much of his career being associated with unusually perceptive child and teenage performances; here, that same vulnerability is being used in a far darker direction.
Shailene Woodley Leads The Hunt In The Film’s Second Timeline
Decades later, the film shifts to Shailene Woodley as FBI agent Joanne Miller, who leads the 1994 manhunt for the Unabomber. The character provides the other half of the movie’s structure: while Tremblay’s timeline examines how Kaczynski was formed, Woodley’s follows investigators trying to stop the man he became.
The supporting cast also includes Annabelle Wallis, Alexander Ludwig, Steven Ogg and Marc Menchaca. Behind the camera, Sophie Cassidy produces for 2.0 Entertainment, with the project made in association with MRC.
Netflix is framing UNABOMBER as a psychological drama rather than a conventional true-crime retelling, and the trailer certainly leans that way. There are police files and a manhunt, yes, but the unsettling material is in the earlier timeline: a teenager in rooms full of adults, being tested, challenged and pushed while something inside him is clearly hardening.
Watch the Official Trailer for Netflix’s UNABOMBER
Netflix’s 2-minute, 30-second trailer introduces Jacob Tremblay’s young Ted Kaczynski, Russell Crowe’s Henry Murray and Shailene Woodley’s FBI agent Joanne Miller ahead of the film’s September 25 premiere.
Source: Netflix Tudum; Netflix Media Center.
