Jacob Tremblay Is Young Ted Kaczynski in New ‘Unabomber’ Trailer

I was born in January of 1989. So, while I grew up in the 90s, I became aware of plenty of events either through random osmosis or because my mom insisted that my watching Nick Jr. was not nearly as important as her watching the OJ Trial. I was a kid, and stories in the news just weren’t that important to me. But sometimes things manage to break through regardless, and the Unabomber was one such story.

It wasn’t something I was particularly well-versed in, but I knew the police sketch, with the sunglasses and hoodie. If anything, popping on sunglasses and tying your hoodie tight was… more of a joke. While I and others I knew were familiar enough with the story to recreate the photo, little thought was given to the people who were hurt or killed as a man terrorized people for nearly two decades.

What I didn’t know was that my flippant reactions to Ted Kaczynski and his crimes would more or less turn into Netflix’s business model. The company has been on a seemingly endless kick of dramatizing real-life monsters for movies or TV shows with sleek trailers, muted colors, and dramatic license. It all feels kind of icky, but that hasn’t stopped folks from tuning in. Now, Jacob Tremblay joins the slew of celebrities who have taken up murderous mantles for the streamer in the new film Unabomber.

I like Tremblay a lot, and most recently saw him in The Life of Chuck. He’s an interesting actor who has certainly tackled heavy, dark things before. His scenes in Doctor Sleep are… devastating, and my favorite tidbit about that is that his screams were so real that they freaked out the cast. Well, now Jacob is taking the next step and making himself the murderer. Well, kind of.

The film takes place over two different timelines: Kaczynski’s time at Harvard and the manhunt to catch him decades later. There are shots toward the end that seem to take place at the cabin he owned, where he was eventually caught, so we’ll possibly see Tremblay transform into an older version of the character. That said, the bulk of his time seems to focus on the man’s time at Harvard, where he volunteered for psychological studies, which the movie already seems to suggest set him on his murderous path, even though that doesn’t seem to work out timeline wise.

Tremblay looks pretty good in it, and we even get some potentially villainous Russell Crowe in there as a treat. But I don’t think this will get me to dip my toe into this pool, no matter how much Netflix keeps filling it up.