The Explosive Soundtrack Powering Netflix’s A House of Dynamite — Every Song Revealed
Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear war epic A House of Dynamite lit the fuse with early buzz, only to sputter with critics and audiences. For a subject this urgent, the film’s quiet thud may be the loudest shock.
Big swings don't always land. Kathryn Bigelow's nuclear panic thriller showed up with some early chatter, then almost immediately cooled off with both critics and audiences. The topic could not be more urgent, but the movie isn't exactly lighting a fire under people. The score, though? Different story. Volker Bertelmann turns the anxiety dial to 11.
The movie may be divisive, but the music is not
A House of Dynamite is built on the dread of how thin the line is between normal life and unspeakable catastrophe. That sense of imminent breakage is exactly what Bertelmann leans into. The soundtrack isn't gentle background; it's a sustained alarm — tension, propulsion, stress. If you&aposve heard his work before, you know the feeling.
Quick refresher on the composer
Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka) is coming off an Oscar and a BAFTA for his All Quiet on the Western Front score in 2022 — the one with that gnarly, skin-crawling motif you still hear in your head. He's been at this for decades, with credits like Ammonite, Conclave, Dune: Prophecy, and The Day of the Jackal, but All Quiet is the one that made everyone pay attention.
Three years later, he's scoring Bigelow's 112-minute Netflix film, with music supervisor George Drakoulias handling the needle drops. If that name rings a bell, he's the guy who&aposs wrangled music for Zodiac, Joker, and Barbie. That's a savvy get when you need licensed tracks that actually land.
The tracklist (and what it hints at)
Below is every original track Bertelmann wrote for the film. It reads like a blow-by-blow of a day you really hope never happens — DEFCON levels, bunker moves, terse orders, even a curveball reference to the WNBA. It's a map of escalating decisions and dwindling options.
- Inclination Is Flattening (2:47)
- White House (2:36)
- Prenup Is Ironclad (0:56)
- Click Alert (1:16)
- DEFCON 2 (1:07)
- Move to PEOC (2:01)
- Negative Impact (3:02)
- Doing Great (2:24)
- Leave If You Can (1:57)
- Your Orders (1:56)
- Hitting a Bullet With a Bullet (2:35)
- Suborbital (2:04)
- 61% (1:38)
- Mr. President (2:54)
- Why Does That Matter (2:52)
- Jake (1:43)
- They're Gonna Back Down (2:16)
- Your Orders 2 (1:52)
- A House Filled With Dynamite (2:42)
- President to WNBA (2:28)
- Allow to Brief You (5:00)
- Explain the Options (1:36)
- Insanity (1:45)
- Surrender Or Suicide (1:55)
- My Orders (3:13)
- No Longer Unimaginable (6:16)
What the film is actually doing
This isn't a coy satire. Compared to Adam McKay's Don't Look Up, Bigelow's approach is clearer and colder: the danger is immediate, not abstract, and the time to debate is over. The message is a flare gun aimed straight up. Whether people want to stare at it is another story. Awards talk? Not really the point here, no matter how loud the seasonal trumpets get. The whole thing is a reminder that one wrong move from the wrong place can pull the plug on everything, fast.
Who made it, who's in it, where to watch
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a script by Noah Oppenheim, the film stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Allen, and Jason Clarke. Netflix is distributing, and yes, it's streaming now. Runtime is a taut 112 minutes. For the numbers people: it's sitting at 79% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.9 on IMDb.
If you watched it, I'm curious where you landed: did the warning hit, or did the delivery get in the way? Either way, the score will probably rattle around your head for a while.