‘This is insanity,’ baulks a shellshocked US President (played by Idris Elba) when he’s asked to make the most difficult of all decisions in horrifying haste. ‘No sir, this is reality,’ comes the sobering correction. From ace director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, A House Of Dynamite brings to life a frighteningly credible nuclear war scenario as it imagines what would happen if the unthinkable occurred, which here triggers a real shitshow of a response.

Told in three nerve-jangling chapters, depicting the same sequence of events from different perspectives, the film takes us from an Alaskan defence station to the White House situation room, FEMA headquarters, nuclear strategic command, and more. It sees anxious experts attempt to get to grips with a situation involving a single nuclear warhead, launched at the United States from an unidentified aggressor, with just 20 minutes before impact. Alongside Elba, Rebecca Ferguson’s captain, Gabriel Basso’s deputy NSA adviser, Jared Harris’ secretary of defence, and Tracy Letts’ general are the major players.

As director of the immaculate political thriller Zero Dark Thirty and muscular military flick The Hurt Locker (for which she bagged the Best Director Oscar), Bigelow is ideally suited to the material. The panic is palpable during this countdown to zero as senior figures are dashed off to secure locations and others are left to pick up the pieces. Volker Bertelmann’s sensationally atmospheric and suffocatingly ominous score cranks up the dread, whilst fidgety camerawork from Barry Ackroyd apes the nervousness in the rooms.

The ensemble are excellent, with the film expertly and efficiently humanising these participants through glimpses of their loved ones, and highlighting the challenge of acting rationally, and indeed morally, under such immense pressure. Both explosively emotional and utterly chilling, this is phenomenal, food-for-thought filmmaking and what the expression edge-of-your-seat was made for.

A House Of Dynamite is in cinemas now and available on Netflix from Friday 24 October.