Christopher Nolan Says Oppenheimer Is ‘Kind of a Horror Movie’

Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan says the upcoming biopic is “kind of a horror movie”.

During an interview with Wired, he revealed that some early viewers had a very emotional reaction to the film, which depicts the invention of the atomic bomb.

“Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” he revealed. “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.”

Oppenheimer tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer – the scientist behind America’s top-secret nuclear weapons program during World War II.

He’s often credited as the father of the atomic bomb and spearheaded the ambitious Manhattan Project which saw the US scientific community come together with the goal of creating the world’s first nuclear bomb.

Obviously, the threat of nuclear war weighed heavily on the US throughout the Cold War, so it’s something that has long been part of the national consciousness. Now, Nolan is using it to unsettle and terrify his audiences.

“It is an intense experience because it’s an intense story,” he said. “I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it’s kind of a horror movie. I don’t disagree.”

The film focuses on the lead-up to the Trinity nuclear test – the world’s first nuclear test.

As the recent trailer showed, it’s more than a little tense.

“Oppenheimer’s story is all impossible questions,” Nolan added. “Impossible ethical dilemmas, paradox. There are no easy answers in his story. There are just difficult questions, and that’s what makes the story so compelling. I think we were able to find a lot of things to be optimistic about in the film, genuinely, but there’s this sort of overriding bigger question that hangs over it. It felt essential that there be questions at the end that you leave rattling in people’s brains and prompting discussion.”

Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer alongside an all-star cast that includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and many more. David Dastmalchian also recently joined the cast in an unknown role, with Drake and Josh star Josh Peck joining as scientist Kenneth Bainbridge.

Want to read more about Oppenheimer? Check out how Nolan recreated a nuclear explosion without using CGI and find out why the film’s rumored release date change never happened.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.