Five Netflix movies to binge if you loved ‘Unabomber’
As the FBI tore its hair out trying to find the man behind a bombing campaign that had haunted America for nearly 20 years, Netflix has given us the answer with Unabomber.
Ted Kaczynski was just 16 when he walked through the doors of Harvard, which in a normal world looks like the beginning of some dazzling academic life, but fast-forward a few decades, and he is living alone in a tiny Montana cabin while the Feds try to pin him down.
That is more or less the story Unabomber covers, taking you back and forth between the hunt and Kaczynski’s life. Throughout the film, you will find yourself wondering how a mind as sharp as this gets involved in such activities, but what really gets you is knowing none of this has been cooked up for television, because just when the story starts feeling a bit too mad to be true, you remember that this actually happened.
So if the show left you wondering how any of that happened in real life, these five Netflix films have the same knack for confusing you with five different true stories.
Five Netflix movies to binge if you loved Unabomber
The Stranger (Thomas M Wright, 2022)
If Unabomber had you on edge whenever investigators got close to their suspect, The Stranger tightens the screws from the off. Joel Edgerton plays Mark, an undercover officer sent to befriend Henry Teague, a man police believe may know what happened to a missing child.
Henry enters a fake criminal network, with Mark cast as the man he can trust, but that’s the catch: every bit of trust Henry hands over gives the police another thread to pull.
The operation borrows from the ‘Mr Big’ technique, where officers create a bogus criminal organisation and use trust and pressure to draw out a confession. Sean Harris gives Henry very little away, so Mark has to keep his cards close while the police build the case around him. One wrong move and the whole thing goes poof!
No Man of God (Amber Sealey, 2021)
Bill Hagmaier’s job in No Man of God is quite unpleasant without any embellishment: he has to sit across from Ted Bundy in prison and keep him talking about the murders, knowing full well that all Bundy wants is another chance to take control.
Click goes the recorder, and from there you are stuck in that room with Hagmaier while he tries to get something useful out of one of the toughest criminals in the world.
Elijah Wood plays Hagmaier opposite Luke Kirby’s Bundy, with the film drawing on conversations the pair had between 1984 and 1989. You might wonder about the Unabomber connection, which is that there is no manhunt left to watch because the man is right there, all within arm’s reach, but the police need a confession.
Patriots Day (Peter Berg, 2016)
With Patriots Day, you will witness the restless investigation of sorts, where people barely have time to breathe. After the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, police have CCTV from across the city and fragments of evidence that could lead somewhere or send the whole search up the garden path.
Meanwhile, the bombers are out there. That is the rub: every hour spent chasing the wrong lead gives them more ground. Mark Wahlberg’s Tommy Saunders, a composite rather than one real Boston officer, puts you right in the middle of it as the net starts closing around Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
From there, the MIT shooting, a carjacking, and the Watertown confrontation all follow, with no room for anyone to put a foot wrong. Unabomber gives investigators years to join the dots, while Patriots Day barely has days and still does the job.
Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood, 2019)
Richard Jewell does what you would hope any security guard would do: he spots a suspicious backpack at Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Atlanta Games and raises the alarm while also helping move people out before the bomb goes off.
For a spell, he is the man who saved lives. Ahh, if only things were ever that simple. Eventually, the FBI starts looking at him as they believe he might be their man, and once his name reaches the press, his life is dragged through the wringer.
The man helped get people away from a bomb, yet now he has to sit there while half the country picks him apart as a possible suspect. It is enough to make your blood boil. Paul Walter Hauser plays Jewell with none of that heroic crap, and if Unabomber had you watching investigators put the pieces together, this gives you the rotten flipside: watch enough pieces get forced into the wrong story, and an innocent man can end up carrying the can.
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
Letters sent to newspapers? Check. Cyphers nobody can leave alone? Yes. A killer who seems to understand the value of keeping the public guessing? Hell yeah! Oh come on, Zodiac was always going to make this list.
David Fincher’s film follows the hunt for the ‘Zodiac Killer’ after a series of murders grips the San Francisco Bay Area, but we focus on the people investigating. What makes Zodiac such a bastard of a case is that the murders stop, but nothing feels finished.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith, whose interest in the Zodiac’s letters grows into an obsession, while Inspector Dave Toschi works the case from the police side. That should sound familiar to any Unabomber fan since their language becomes evidence, and everyone keeps hoping the next clue will break the dam.