Christopher Nolan Agrees OPPENHEIMER Is Like Horror Movie and Leaves Audiences "Absolutely Devastated"
Christopher Nolan’s next film Oppenheimer looks absolutely incredible, and it’s one of my most anticipated films of the year. Not only does it look like an incredibly well-made film, but the story it tells is also both fascinating a frightening. I know a lot about the history of the creation of the Atomic Bomb, but I’m very curious to see how Nolan brings that story to life.
During a recent interview with Wired, Nolan talked about some of the early reactions from people who have seen the movie and it sounds like it’s going to be quite a harrowing experience for moviegoers. It has even been described as a horror movie, which Nolan agrees with. He said:
"It is an intense experience, because it's an intense story. I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it's kind of a horror movie. I don't disagree."
Nolan explained that the horror elements come from the darkness of the story the movie tells. That story centers on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), who ran the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II. The filmmaker said:
"It's a complicated set of feelings to be entertained by awful things, you know? Which is where the horror dimension comes in.”
Nolan also shared some other early reactions from audiences, which includes the movie leaving people absolutely devastated. He said:
"Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated. They can't speak. I mean, there's an element of fear that's there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I've ever done."
Damn. This is the kind of talk that gets me even more excited about watching a movie!
Murphy is joined in the film by Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
The movie also stars Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence, along with Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, and Matthew Modine.
The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analogue photography.
Oppenheimer opens in theaters on July 21, 2023.