ted k unabomber movie review

“Ted K” trumpets its authentic bona fides early, informing us in an opening crawl that it was shot on the actual Montana land where Ted Kaczynski’s 10-by-12-foot cabin once stood, where he lived his spartan life and crafted the manifesto that would earn him the moniker The Unabomber. We also learn that director Tony Stone and his co-writers, Gaddy Davis and John Rosenthal , used Kaczynski’s own words from his 25,000 pages of writing to build their script.

The Unabomber viewed the encroachment of technology as a crucial force in destroying the natural world. He wrote about it, he raged about it. He’s currently serving a life sentence in federal prison for his deadly efforts to stop it. Lest we have any doubt about his philosophy, we hear him lay it out in an opening voiceover from star Sharlto Copley : “Modern technology is the worst thing that ever happened to the world, and to promote its progress is nothing short of criminal.” And of course, the  Washington Post published his manifesto in June 1995 in hopes of preventing further terrorist violence.

And yet, while Copley is on screen for nearly the entirety of “Ted K,” which follows Kaczynski in the years leading up to his arrest, the man himself remains inherently unknowable—fearsome and fascinating but just out of reach. His performance is tightly coiled and increasingly twitchy as Ted struggles to maintain his composure and dares to execute more and more violent acts against those he views as his aggressors. “I have a plan for revenge,” he says in the nasally narration of his journals. “I want to kill some people, preferably a scientist, a communist, businessman or some other big shot.” What he thinks is clear; who he is, less so.

That’s probably by design. Despite the shocking acts on display in “Ted K,” we feel like we’re in a bit of a haze as we wander the woods with Kaczynski, watching him run shirtless and shoot at helicopters. Stone favors the subtlest of pushes into his subject matter, or uses slow-motion to contrast with the significance of a moment of truth, as when Kaczynski mails off one of his deadly, explosive packages with Alice in Chains’ “Rooster” blaring in the background. The noise of chopping, sawing, and shearing from the nearby logging industry creates a pesky rhythm. And the droning, synth score from British composer Benjamin John Power , known as Blanck Mass , adds greatly to the film’s overall hypnotic vibe. Just as the din surrounding Kaczynski swells to a panicky cacophony, so, too, do the music and sound design grow to heighten our feeling of anxiety.

But some of the tensest moments in the film are actually the most mundane, as when Kaczynski confronts a phone company clerk about losing coins in the pay phone. An airplane crosses the blue sky overhead, shattering the reverie of his peace and quiet, and you can feel the anger rising within him. And a seemingly innocuous trip to the local library reveals that he’s looking up the names and addresses of tech executives to target them.

Increasingly, though, Stone relies on fantasy sequences to signify Kaczynski’s break with reality and sanity, which feels unnecessary. We see a pretty and pleasant woman named Becky ( Amber Rose Mason ) who appears magically and just happens to be interested in all the things he likes to do, such as bike riding and fishing. We already know he’s lonely—he complains about how little experience he’s had with women in his agitated, one-sided phone calls with his mother and brother—but the arrival of this sunny, imaginary figure into Kaczynski’s moody cocoon becomes a distraction.

Still, Copley’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. His squirrelly nature makes him unpredictable, even as he sits quietly in his cozy cabin, listening to classical music on the Montana NPR station, planning who he’ll try to kill next.

Now playing in theaters and available on demand.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Sharlto Copley as Ted
• Drew Powell as Tom
• Christian Calloway as Tommy
• Bob Jennings as Carter
• Tahmus Rounds as Tommy Sauerkraut
• Sal Rendino as Gilbert
• Amber Rose Mason as Becky
• Wayne Pyle as Gary Dryce
• Blanck Mass

Cinematographer

• Ethan Palmer
• Nathan Corbin
• Gaddy Davis
• John Rosenthal
• Robert Mead

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‘Ted K’ Review: An Eerie Descent

Tony Stone directs an expressionistic portrait of Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber.

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By Beatrice Loayza

Shot largely in the secluded mountains outside Lincoln, Mont., where the real Theodore J. Kaczynski lived before his arrest by the F.B.I. in 1996, “Ted K” is a blinkered portrait of the infamous domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber.

The director Tony Stone — whose 2016 documentary “Peter at the Farm” also put the spotlight on a mean (if far less sinister) recluse — dramatizes Kaczynski’s psychological state throughout the 17 years he spent building and sending bombs that killed three and injured dozens more. Sections from Kaczynski’s extensive writings are narrated in voice-over like drifting thoughts by Sharlto Copley (“District 9”), who takes on the titular role with vulnerability and palpable fury. As Kaczynski learns how to construct more sophisticated weapons, we observe his brief interactions with the outside world — his perpetual struggle with a finicky public phone booth, his irregular conversations with his concerned mother and the brother whose marriage he resents.

The film is a tad reductive, leaning too heavily on currently fashionable explanations for why lonely white men resort to violence. But Stone makes up for it with some magnificently eerie moments.

An original score by the electronic artist Blanck Mass, anachronistically interwoven with classical numbers by Vivaldi, certainly helps, creating a mood of grandiose delirium. Filled with menacing slow zooms and fade transitions, the film nevertheless feels inconsistent when it jerks back and forth from stylized depictions of Kaczynski’s crimes, building him up as a kind of anti-villain badass, to a tone of gentle, ultimately sympathetic mockery — as when Kaczynski begins courting an imaginary girlfriend.

The script’s emphasis on Kaczynski’s relentless bachelorhood and his feelings of castration is too neat an explanation. More convincing is the film’s expressionistic fixation on the technologies that torment Kaczynski — the ugly roar of dirt bikes, snowmobiles and tree-razing bulldozers. In one remarkable dream sequence, we see Kaczynski seemingly shooting through the space-time continuum, looking small and terrified and like the kind of man who would kill to feel a sense of control.

Ted K Rated R for nudity, language and stylized violence. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon , Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

‘Ted K’ Review: Sharlto Copley Is the Unabomber in a Slow-Burning True-Crime Study

'Peter and the Farm' director Tony Stone takes an ambient, minimalistic approach to the life of notorious domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski.

By Guy Lodge

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For a criminal who revealed his agenda in exhaustively detailed black-and-white — via his famous essay “Industrial Society and the Future,” published in The Washington Post months ahead of his 1996 capture — Ted Kaczynski remains a somewhat unreadable figure. The domestic terrorist better known as the Unabomber killed three people and injured two dozen more in a national bombing campaign aimed at protesting man’s environmental destruction and technological dependence. Yet his manifesto shed little light on who he actually was, or how a mild-mannered math professor from Chicago grew into an eccentric, isolated survivalist and, eventually, FBI most-wanted material. That makes him a subject both fascinating and oddly resistant to dramatization, though that hasn’t stopped writers and filmmakers from trying over the years.

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The latest such effort, Tony Stone ‘s growlingly moody “ Ted K ,” is a biopic that effectively honors its subject with its opaque severity. There’s little attempt here to “crack” Kaczynski or psychologize him, even though the script is drawn heavily from his own extensive writings. A vivid, committed performance by Sharlto Copley does make the man of a million headlines seem appreciably human, but not approachably so. This is a distant, impressionistic character study that seeks to immerse its audience in a generally nervous state of mind — both that of Kaczynski himself, as his ambitions and exploits escalate to a point of anonymous celebrity, and of a public at his selective mercy. Quite what we gain from the experience is uncertain, with most viewers likely to leave the film understanding little more of the Unabomber than they did two hours before. Still, “Ted K” is impressive and oppressive in equal measure.

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A slow introductory crawl fills in the Wikipedia-level facts about Kaczynski for the uninformed, while also playing up the authenticity of the film to follow. It was shot, we are told, on the very patch of Montana land where Kaczynski’s spartan 10- by 12-foot cabin once stood, and incorporates firsthand perspective from the 25,000 pages of journaling found inside it. Stone hardly needs to brag. “Ted K” projects stony, disquieting conviction from its aggressive first set piece, which introduces Kaczynski spying on a wealthy family, his contempt tangible as they rowdily mess around on high-end snowmobiles outside their mountain lodge. Once they’ve left the premises, he breaks in, hacking through the walls with an ax before laying waste to the offending vehicles. An eerie electro-orchestral score by British experimental musician Blanck Mass (aka Benjamin John Power) is cranked to ear-stinging levels as the carnage continues.

This passage of home-invasion horror may be of little consequence compared to the crimes Kaczynski later commits, but it arrestingly captures his grievances in miniature. “Ted K” isn’t wholly unsympathetic to its subject’s cause, even if this opening salvo offers a frightening taste of the crazed excess with which he takes action. But the filmmaking gives weight to his pained concern for the environment, and his positively feverish sensitivity to noise pollution. The sound design is discordant, distorted, even anxiety-inducing. DP Nathan Corbin offers multiple serene tableaux of the verdant Montana landscape being wrecked by industry, as ruthlessly as Kaczynski hacks up those snowmobiles. Stone’s film doesn’t need to warm or soften its subject’s persona to underline the essential tragedy of the man: that he had something of a point, and the worst possible way of making it.

Rather than tracing a dutiful biographical arc, Stone’s script (co-written with Gaddy Davis and John Rosenthal) is composed of scattered vignettes from the last decade or so of Kaczynski’s life as a free man. Some are speculatively intimate, capturing his solitary daily routine in the woods, with no electricity and only a radio as a link to the modern world. Others procedurally mark the planning and execution of his bombings, though they maintain the cool temperature and austere observational tack of the more everyday scenes. The filmmakers can afford this unemotive reserve, since Copley’s strange, highly-strung work anchors proceedings with all the jittery intensity they need. In the South African star’s most interesting and expansive showcase since his debut in “District 9,” callused body language contrasts with the reedy, unconfident vocal tics of a man who rarely speaks to anyone but himself.

The backstory of Kaczynski’s evolution into a woody recluse is only glancingly filled in, often via anguished, one-sided phone conversations with his brother David, who is kept as inaudible as any direct line into the past. A scattering of fantasy scenes with the devoted woman of Kaczynski’s dreams are a miscalculation that feel imported from a more conventional, explicatory draft of this project. Likewise, we hardly need the blunt musical cue of Bobby Vinton’s “Mister Lonely” to tell us what a sad, sexless life we’re observing. At its best, “Ted K” reveals itself in sound, mood and texture, akin to the most prickly minimalism of Gus van Sant or Antonio Campos. It sidesteps any popular Unabomber mythos and remains reluctant to forge any of its own. Ted Kaczynski isn’t just a regular guy, that much Stone’s film makes clear. But he’s just a guy all the same.

Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (online), London, March 2, 2021. Running time: 121 MIN.

• Production: A Heathen Films presentation, in association with Verisimilitude, Hideout Pictures, In Your Face Entertainment. (World sales: Hanway Films, London.) Producers: Tony Stone, Matt Flanders, Sharlto Copley. Executive producers: Cameron Brodie, Tyler Brodie, Melissa Auf der Maur, Shannon Houchins, Potsy Ponciroli, Trevor O’Neil. Co-producers: Jake Perlin, Niles Roth, Colin Scott.
• Crew: Director: Tony Stone. Screenplay: Gaddy Davis, John Rosenthal, Stone. Camera: Nathan Corbin. Editors: Stone, Brad Turner. Music: Blanck Mass.
• With: Sharlto Copley, Drew Powell, Amber Rose Mason, Travis Bruyer, Tahmus Rounds, Christian Calloway.

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Ted K Reviews

Ted K succeeds in giving us an honest portrayal of a psychopathic terrorist, one that is actually conscious that as an audience, we are sometimes too easily caught up in our morbid fascination and mythologizing of psychos.

Full Review | Jun 15, 2023

While the movie doesn’t take any leaps to build or excavate its central character, it does offer a procedural look at the gradual ascension of a domestic terrorist.

Full Review | Jan 2, 2023

Sharlto Copley gives a fine performance as Ted, particularly showing his anger and frustration. The cinematography, by Nathan Corbin and Ethan Palmer, is impressive. This film was filmed in the location where Ted used to live in Montana.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Dec 13, 2022

It's a riveting look at the radicalization of the man who became the Unabomber. Sharlto Copley is amazing.

Full Review | Dec 4, 2022

Kaczynski has been the subject of television series, documentaries and a podcast. None of those, though, has the eerie verisimilitude of Ted K and a tour-de-force title performance like Sharlto Copley’s.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 14, 2022

Ted K is by no means an easy or enjoyable watch. But oddly compelling, hypnotic and provocative? For sure. It’s definitely not for everyone, though.

Full Review | Jun 22, 2022

A great deal of the storytelling manages to tap into an overwhelming claustrophobia that is effective yet can also be oppressive to the point where the material is less impactful.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 8, 2022

A deeply committed performance by Sharlto Copley galvanizes this chilling biopic.

Full Review | May 28, 2022

At two hours long, Ted K drags at points but is never held down for long. The filmmaking is very strong, but it's Copleys performance that sells it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 15, 2022

Sufficiently clear about impractical relationships and sexual frustration, but is a missed opportunity in everything else.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 11, 2022

This movie is as haunting as it is beautiful and altered my perception of who Ted Kaczynski is. The scariest takeaway from this film is not that Ted is a monster but instead that he is just a man and that makes what he did all the more horrifying.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 8, 2022

Casting Copley as Ted Kaczynski is kind of brilliant, and I believe director Tony Stone knows this.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 25, 2022

A frustrating middle ground that doesn't work as a true-crime story or as an insight into one person's madness.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 22, 2022

Two full hours is a long time to spend in this particular land-o’-cray-cray, but by and large the film pulls it off.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

A surprisingly non-exploitative, matter-of-fact approach to a madman with a measured performance by Sharlto Copley makes this the kind of film Joker wishes it could have been.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 22, 2022

iTed K/i feels more like a psychological horror exercise than a docudrama, and thats a much-appreciated approach.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 20, 2022

Ted K uses Montana's lush, natural beauty to paint a surreal, if plodding picture of a man who saw technology as the bane of human existence

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2022

A slow-burning, quietly engrossing and understated glimpse inside the mind of a madman. Sharlto Copley gives a convincingly moving, transformative performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.458432/10 | Feb 19, 2022

This deep dive into the mind of a notorious terrorist is handled well, forgoing all the tired, traditional biopic notes and staying focused on the subject and capturing his emotions.

A stunning performance by Sharlto Copley... finds emotional mercury in Kaczynski’s boiling cauldron of rage.

Full Review | Feb 18, 2022

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Berlin Review: ‘Ted K’ Delves Into World Of The Unabomber

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Director Tony Stone delves into the world of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski in Ted K , premiering in the Panorama strand of the Berlin Film Festival . More of a mood piece than a biopic, it stars an understated Sharlto Copley as the former math professor, who’s living off grid in the Montana mountains, fostering a burgeoning grudge against technology. We drop in on him over the decades as he gathers materials to experiment with bombs, targeting people he believes are harming the environment. We watch him write coded rants against industrialization, and about the invasive noise of airplanes.

Sound is key to communicating Ted’s point of view. In the wilderness, we hear the ripple of a stream, the crackle of a fire, the clank of his spoon on a tin — he is alone and uninterrupted. When an airplane flies over, he’s visibly distressed. When he takes a trip into the city, the voiceover (based on his writings) becomes almost inaudible under the noise of traffic. Classical music seems to be used when he’s feeling more satisfied; electronic intrudes when trouble is afoot. It strikes you that this would sound amazing in a movie theater, but this is 2021, and last we heard even Stone hadn’t watched his feature in one.

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On the small screen, it’s a quietly involving watch that gives an insight into Kaczynski’s troubled mind with an atmospheric intensity; but with less information than a traditional feature or documentary. There are rewards in decoding the behavior of this elusive character, but the same points are repeated: basically, he is a socially awkward, paranoid, lone conspiracist. These traits are best established in one-sided phone conversations in a remote, creaky phone booth. In an early conversation with his mother, Ted is clearly berated for his lack of social skills. Ted blames her for putting him ahead two years at high school, and for his resulting lack of sexual experience (“Well, who do you want me to tell? Who should I tell this to, Ma?”). At this point, the camera starts whirling around the phone booth — it’s giddying, almost nauseating, creating a sense of the discomfort Ted experiences when speaking to others.

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Like several movie ‘incels’ before him — most recently Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker — Ted retreats into a fantasy world when it comes to women. Becky (a well-cast Amber Rose Mason) is his occasional imaginary companion, tellingly dressed in fashions from the 50s, a simpler time. When he speaks to real people, he’s rude and often sexist (“I don’t take direction from women on mechanical matters,” he tells a female boss). But this takes an even-handed approach to the character, showing his actions and thoughts rather than inviting us to judge him. Like Ted, we don’t see the damage he inflicts first hand: we hear about it on the news.

Authenticity is clearly paramount to the filmmakers, who painstakingly recreated Kaczynski’s cabin in its original location. But while this succeeds in putting us into Ted’s physical world — claustrophobic even in the wild — it doesn’t give a deep insight into his mind. Perhaps that is the point, but it makes Ted K more impressive for its use of sound and vision than its investigation of a character.

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Home » ‘Ted K’ review: Sharlto Copley enters the mind of the Unabomber to mixed results

‘Ted K’ review: Sharlto Copley enters the mind of the Unabomber to mixed results

In Ted K , Sharlto Copley and Tony Stone don’t quite justify yet another film tackling the complex and horrifying life of the Unabomber.

Despite the roughly 25,000 pages of diary entries and The Washington Post manifesto “Industrial Society and the Future,” Ted Kaczynski (A.K.A the Unabomber) remains a largely indecipherable figure. Two recent Netflix shows—the drama series Manhunt: Unabomber and docuseries Unabomber: In His Own Words —have attempted to shed light on the domestic terrorist’s life.

What caused Kaczynski, a former mathematics professor, to kill 3 people, injure 23 more, and become the subject of the largest manhunt in FBI history? Ted K , a new, unsettling historical crime drama directed and co-written by Tony Stone ( Peter and the Farm ), avoids answering this question and instead observes the societal frustrations that inspired the Unabomber’s murderous acts. 

From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski targeted individuals he deemed contributors to the destruction of humanity and the environment, including anyone from a computer store owner to the president of United Airlines. The film does not glorify his behavior, but it does allow some room for empathy, to the extent one can have for such a horrible person, through its depiction of his life of isolation and loneliness. Sharlto Copley delivers a restrained performance that presents Kaczynski as a man who is quick to anger and feels alienated from the rest of the world. He is enraged by a society that ignores his deepest fears and retreats into a 10- by 12-foot cabin in the woods of Lincoln, Montana. 

We first see Ted in the distance watching through the trees with contempt as a family noisily drives their snowmobiles, disrupting the peace in his beloved woods. We then witness his rage when he breaks into the family’s home and destroys their vehicles, foreshadowing what would later become his bombing “missions.” The film places the audience straight into Kaczynski’s agitated state of mind, with Copley providing voiceover as industrial explosions, deforestation, and pollution threaten his home.

The audience understands his bombings as acts of revenge against this industrial advancement and his admission that societal change to a more primitive lifestyle is improbable. The sound design, along with the anxiety-inducing electronic score by Blanck Mass, deserve credit here as the cacophony of Kaczynski’s surroundings drives him mad and makes his attempts to escape modern society futile. In addition, the cinematography by Nathan Corbin expresses Kaczynski’s frustrations by contrasting the serene Montana landscape with the violent destruction of industrial enterprise.

Stone pushes past many conventional biopic tropes in favor of forming a series of vignettes from the last years of Kaczynski’s life before his arrest. The vignettes range from depicting the preparation and execution of the bombings to Kaczynski’s daily routine living in his cabin. Spliced in between are his regular interactions with the outside world, taking on various jobs and conversing with his mother and brother, whom he eventually cuts off contact with. In these moments, we see Kaczynski’s misanthropy and dysfunctional social habits take real shape. And through his toxic interactions with women, Kaczynski’s misogyny and sexual frustration come to the surface. “I don’t take instruction on technical matters from women,” he says before getting fired from a logging job. 

These moments are also where the film unfortunately missteps. Stone’s loose narrative framework and focus on stylistic flourishes, including bizarre dream sequences and abrupt jump cuts, obfuscate the writing of Kaczynski’s character. In this way, Ted K acts more as a ponderous mood piece inundated in the slow burn of Kaczynski’s descent, rather than a film with evocative visuals that complement Copley’s lead performance.

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This willingness for experimentation is respectable, but too often it leads to a repetitive narrative that lacks any forward momentum toward Kaczynski’s eventual downfall. The fantasy sequences with Becky, a woman from Kaczynski’s dreams, feel tacked on while the one-sided phone conversations with Kaczynski’s brother David are underdeveloped. This lack of cohesion results in a tedious two-hour affair with an ending that doesn’t give us much to contemplate afterward. 

As the centerpiece of Ted K , Sharlto Copley’s performance shines through the muck. Projects such as District 9 and Hardcore Henry have long proven that Copley embraces risks as a transformative actor. Here, he balances Kaczynski’s rage over civilization with the peace he finds within nature. But his performance is held back by an overall mixed film. The audience is left with little to work with on what drives Kaczynski, preventing him from being a completely engaging presence. Perhaps that’s what Stone is aiming for. An enigmatic man struggling to find belonging in a world unsympathetic to his problems. 

Ted K  will be available in theaters and on digital on February 18. Watch the trailer  here .

Alex Nguyen

Alex Nguyen is an aspiring entertainment writer as well as a film and music enthusiast based in Seattle, WA. He enjoys going to indie concerts and dissecting all kinds of films.

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Tony Stone

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120 Minutes

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Sharlto copley, drew powell, christian calloway, amber rose mason, bob jennings, screen rant review, ted k review: sharlto copley's unabomber is effective oscar throwback.

At two hours long, Ted K drags at points but is never held down for long. The filmmaking is very strong, but it's Copley’s performance that sells it.

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Latest stories, sharlto copley & tony stone interview: ted k, ted k trailer shows sharlto copley’s chilling take on the unabomber.

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Ted K (2021)

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‘Ted K’ Review: Sharlto Copley Is the Unabomber in a Slow-Burning True-Crime Study

For a criminal who revealed his agenda in exhaustively detailed black-and-white — via his famous essay “Industrial Society and the Future,” published in The Washington Post months ahead of his 1996 capture — Ted Kaczynski remains a somewhat unreadable figure. The domestic terrorist better known as the Unabomber killed three people and injured two dozen more in a national bombing campaign aimed at protesting man’s environmental destruction and technological dependence. Yet his manifesto shed little light on who he actually was, or how a mild-mannered math professor from Chicago grew into an eccentric, isolated survivalist and, eventually, FBI most-wanted material. That makes him a subject both fascinating and oddly resistant to dramatization, though that hasn’t stopped writers and filmmakers from trying over the years.

The latest such effort, Tony Stone ’s growlingly moody “ Ted K ,” is a biopic that effectively honors its subject with its opaque severity. There’s little attempt here to “crack” Kaczynski or psychologize him, even though the script is drawn heavily from his own extensive writings. A vivid, committed performance by Sharlto Copley does make the man of a million headlines seem appreciably human, but not approachably so. This is a distant, impressionistic character study that seeks to immerse its audience in a generally nervous state of mind — both that of Kaczynski himself, as his ambitions and exploits escalate to a point of anonymous celebrity, and of a public at his selective mercy. Still, “Ted K” is impressive and oppressive in equal measure.

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A slow introductory crawl fills in the Wikipedia-level facts about Kaczynski for the uninformed, while also playing up the authenticity of the film to follow. It was shot, we are told, on the very patch of Montana land where Kaczynski’s spartan 10- by 12-foot cabin once stood, and incorporates firsthand perspective from the 25,000 pages of journaling found inside it. Stone hardly needs to brag. “Ted K” projects stony, disquieting conviction from its aggressive first set piece, which introduces Kaczynski spying on a wealthy family, his contempt tangible as they rowdily mess around on high-end snowmobiles outside their mountain lodge. Once they’ve left the premises, he breaks in, hacking through the walls with an ax before laying waste to the offending vehicles. An eerie electro-orchestral score by British experimental musician Blanck Mass (aka Benjamin John Power) is cranked to ear-stinging levels as the carnage continues.

This passage of home-invasion horror may be of little consequence compared to the crimes Kaczynski later commits, but it arrestingly captures his grievances in miniature. “Ted K” isn’t wholly unsympathetic to its subject’s cause, even if this opening salvo offers a frightening taste of the crazed excess with which he takes action. But the filmmaking gives weight to his pained concern for the environment, and his positively feverish sensitivity to noise pollution. The sound design is discordant, distorted, even anxiety-inducing. DP Nathan Corbin offers multiple serene tableaux of the verdant Montana landscape being wrecked by industry, as ruthlessly as Kaczynski hacks up those snowmobiles. Stone’s film doesn’t need to warm or soften its subject’s persona to underline the essential tragedy of the man: that he had something of a point, and the worst possible way of making it.

Rather than tracing a dutiful biographical arc, Stone’s script (co-written with Gaddy Davis and John Rosenthal) is composed of scattered vignettes from the last decade or so of Kaczynski’s life as a free man. Some are speculatively intimate, capturing his solitary daily routine in the woods, with no electricity and only a radio as a link to the modern world. Others procedurally mark the planning and execution of his bombings, though they maintain the cool temperature and austere observational tack of the more everyday scenes. The filmmakers can afford this unemotive reserve, since Copley’s strange, highly-strung work anchors proceedings with all the jittery intensity they need. In the South African star’s most interesting and expansive showcase since his debut in “District 9,” callused body language contrasts with the reedy, unconfident vocal tics of a man who rarely speaks to anyone but himself.

The backstory of Kaczynski’s evolution into a woody recluse is only glancingly filled in, often via anguished, one-sided phone conversations with his brother David, who is kept as inaudible as any direct line into the past. A scattering of fantasy scenes with the devoted woman of Kaczynski’s dreams are a miscalculation that feel imported from a more conventional, explicatory draft of this project. Likewise, we hardly need the blunt musical cue of Bobby Vinton’s “Mister Lonely” to tell us what a sad, sexless life we’re observing. At its best, “Ted K” reveals itself in sound, mood and texture, akin to the most prickly minimalism of Gus van Sant or Antonio Campos. It sidesteps any popular Unabomber mythos and remains reluctant to forge any of its own. Ted Kaczynski isn’t just a regular guy, that much Stone’s film makes clear. But he’s just a guy all the same.

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