Ted K lives a life of almost complete seclusion in a simple wooden cabin in the mountains of Montana. But then this former university professor, who despises modern society and its faith in technology, becomes radicalized. What begins with local acts of sabotage, ends with deadly bomb attacks. To the outside world, Ted K becomes known as the Unabomber. Based on Ted Kaczynski's diaries and writings, Tony Stone's film is a kaleidoscopic true crime journey into the life of one o... (Full plot summary below)
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Ted K lives a life of almost complete seclusion in a simple wooden cabin in the mountains of Montana. But then this former university professor, who despises modern society and its faith in technology, becomes radicalized. What begins with local acts of sabotage, ends with deadly bomb attacks. To the outside world, Ted K becomes known as the Unabomber. Based on Ted Kaczynski's diaries and writings, Tony Stone's film is a kaleidoscopic true crime journey into the life of one of America's most complex and eccentric killers. It features a tour-de-force performance from Sharlto Copley who portrays the complexity of this unique outsider, raging at the forces of both the inescapable technological society that plagues him and his own inner demons.
Leave your thoughts about Ted K.
| Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAn enthralling, even visionary drama that regards its subject with empathy and horror, locates him on the actual piece of land he once owned in Montana and portrays him through a stunning performance by Sharlto Copley, who finds emotional mercury in Kaczynski’s boiling cauldron of rage. |
| RogerEbert.comChristy LemireCopley’s performance remains riveting throughout. It’s a testament to his delivery and physicality that we can hear Kaczynski speak expansively about what he’s going to do, and we can watch him experiment with various explosives, and we’re still on edge, wondering what might happen. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreDirector and co-writer Tony Stone built his script out of Kaczynski’s endless writings, his letters to the editor, his phone calls with his increasingly estranged and eventually alarmed family, and out of his infamous newspaper-published “manifesto.” And Copley brings the articulate, twisted and deranged writings to life. |
| TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanA risky experiment with a striking payoff, Ted K is an impressionistic attempt to personalize the most unrelatable experience imaginable: life as a killer. |
| The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe requiem-like heaviness of the music at times risks pushing Ted K into overwrought territory, but this remains a haunting vision of vengeful obsession carried out by a criminal who makes some provocative points. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawIt is a riveting, dreamlike evocation of this man’s tortured, unhappy life, whose transient successes bring him no pleasure of any kind. |
| IndieWireEric KohnAs it stands, Ted K amounts to a fragmented set of moments, many of them quite disturbing, and some them quite sad. But the half-baked quality of the big picture leads to the conclusion that it may be impossible to ever fully comprehend the motivating factors that led to Kaczynski’s fate — and perhaps that’s how it belongs. |
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleA little of Ted Kaczynski can go a long way — especially at two hours — even as one’s appreciation for Copley’s intensity and cinematographer Nathan Corbin’s artful shotmaking never wanes. But in the well-trod realm of forensic examinations of the notorious, Stone’s considered hike into the life and times of a very American-made extremist does have undeniable power. |
| Screen RantNadir SamaraThe filmmaking is very strong, but it's Copley’s performance that sells it. |
| Screen DailyTim GriersonAs arresting as this speculative portrait can be at times, the film is ultimately both galvanised and limited by how unknowable its protagonist turns out to be. |
