Netflix’s appetite for true-crime storytelling reached new heights this week as Unabomber, the psychological thriller starring Russell Crowe and Jacob Tremblay, surged to the top of the streamer’s worldwide movie chart just days after its debut. The film, which premiered on September 25, claimed the No. 1 spot globally by September 27, according to tracking data from FlixPatrol, cementing its status as the most-watched film on the platform and drawing viewers into one of America’s most infamous domestic-terrorism cases.
The rapid ascent underscores how deeply streaming audiences remain captivated by real-life criminals and the investigations that pursued them. Netflix has leaned heavily into that territory of late, bringing viewers Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story this month as the latest installment in Ryan Murphy’s serial-killer anthology. Now, with Unabomber, the streamer has turned its attention to Ted Kaczynski, the reclusive mathematician who spent nearly two years mailing bombs across the United States and became known to the public as the Unabomber.
A Two-Timeline Investigation
Unabomber is a true-crime thriller that blends a psychological character study with a familiar police procedural, unfolding across two timelines. The film jumps between Kaczynski’s early years at Harvard and the sprawling FBI investigation that eventually brought the case to a close, attempting to trace the experiences and ideas that shaped a brilliant but increasingly isolated young man into the terrorist the world would come to fear.
Jacob Tremblay plays Kaczynski as a teenage Harvard prodigy, the gifted student who becomes the subject of controversial psychological experiments overseen by Harvard professor Henry Murray, portrayed by Russell Crowe. Those experiments form a central thread in the film’s effort to explore the formative forces that drove Kaczynski before he became a household name in the worst possible way.
The other half of the story moves decades forward, following the FBI’s attempt to identify the man behind a string of deadly bombings. Shailene Woodley plays Joanne Miller, an FBI agent consumed by a desire to understand who the Unabomber is and what motivates him. That investigation supplies the film’s procedural backbone, as agents chase leads while Miller grows increasingly convinced that cracking Kaczynski’s psychology could be the key to ending the nightmare.
Critics Remain Cold Despite Streaming Success
Despite its popularity with viewers, the film’s critical reception has been decidedly cool. The Harvard material leans into psychological-thriller and dark-academia territory, while the FBI storyline plays more like a conventional manhunt procedural, and some critics have argued that the two timelines do not always mesh smoothly, with the procedural sections feeling more familiar than the scenes focused on Kaczynski’s formative years.
Unabomber currently holds a 23% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, a figure that stands in stark contrast to its commanding position on Netflix’s charts. Several reviews have praised the lead performances from Tremblay and Crowe, even as they criticized the screenplay and its reliance on a well-trodden true-crime approach.
It is a reminder that audiences will follow notorious criminals to the ends of the earth, even when critics refuse to board the train.
Industry observation on Netflix’s true-crime strategy
The disconnect between critical reception and viewer interest is hardly new to Netflix, which has repeatedly demonstrated that streaming numbers and awards-season favorability are not always aligned. Unabomber’s early lead on the global chart sits ahead of Best of the Best, The Whisper Man, A Minecraft Movie, and Black Adam, a roster that highlights how aggressively the platform’s catalog competes for attention.
Looking Ahead
As streaming momentum builds, Unabomber appears well positioned to hold its ground near the top of Netflix’s worldwide rankings in the coming weeks, even as the mixed critical response may limit its longer-term cultural footprint. For a studio that has made a science of turning infamous criminals into binge-worthy entertainment, the film represents another data point in a strategy that continues to resonate with viewers, if not with the press. Whether Unabomber can sustain its No. 1 status against a steady stream of new releases will become clear in the days ahead.
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