Netflix has released “Unabomber,” a film directed by Danish filmmaker Janus Metz about Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski and the psychological experiments he was subjected to at Harvard.
According to reporting by DR, the film centers on Kaczynski’s early years. He entered Harvard University at the age of 16 and became a subject in the so-called Murray experiment.
Metz spoke about the project on the DR P1 program K-Live. He says Kaczynski was a test subject in experiments in brainwashing and thought control sponsored by the CIA. The experiments, per Metz, were about breaking down young men to see whether their thoughts could be steered.
The cast includes 19-year-old Jacob Tremblay as the young Kaczynski and Russell Crowe as psychology professor Henry Murray, who ran the experiments. Shailene Woodley plays FBI agent Joanne Miller. Netflix states that the film began streaming on September 25, 2026.
The New York Times describes the film as a two-strand narrative, with one line following the Harvard years and the other the 1990s manhunt. The Boston Globe reports that the film concentrates on Kaczynski’s time at Harvard and the Murray study.
A disputed connection
Metz stresses that the film does not conclude that the experiments turned the young mathematics prodigy into a serial killer. He describes Kaczynski as a probably very sensitive person who may have had a personality disorder from an early age. Metz adds that Kaczynski had an extraordinarily high IQ and found a father figure in Murray.
Kaczynski himself repeatedly rejected the idea that the Murray experiment shaped his personality. Kathleen Puckett, the FBI investigator who led the psychological profiling of the Unabomber, said in the podcast “Project Unabomb” in 2022 that she does not believe the experiment had much to do with it. Asked about this, Metz says the film does not claim that one thing necessarily led to the other.
Metz says the film argues that Kaczynski was exposed to things at Harvard that were probably not beneficial to his mental state. He also says he could point to interviews stating the opposite of those accounts. Most people, he says, would agree the experiments were not without significance.
Kaczynski’s bombing campaign ran from 1978 to 1995 and involved devices he placed himself or sent by mail. Three people were killed and 23 injured, according to DR’s account. A tip led to his arrest in 1996, and in 1998 he was sentenced to eight life terms plus 30 years. He died in prison in 2023.
The story has been filmed before, as a movie in 1996, as television series in 2017 and 2020, and again as a film in 2021. The new production adds to a growing list of Danish-directed titles on the platform, alongside recent Nordic noir successes.
On the question of mythologizing violent men on screen, Metz says he cannot control how the film is read. He says the film spends considerable effort showing the tragedy and the acts of violence Kaczynski committed. A degree of sympathy for the young Ted, he says, must not excuse his actions.
