In the history of the Pacific Northwest, there is a grim, oft-forgotten chapter written in blood and defined by poisonous hate. In the early 1980s, a militant white supremacist group known as the Order carried out armed attacks with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the government and killing anyone they deemed an enemy to their racist cause. 

Led by Robert Jay Mathews, a neo-Nazi who relocated to the state after serving time for tax fraud, the group ran a counterfeiting operation, robbed a video porn store, a bank, and armored cars, and once bombed a Seattle movie theater in an attempt to distract the police. They intended to use the millions they stole to fund their violent overthrow of the government, but were cut short when an informant confessed to the FBI after being arrested for passing counterfeit bills. This led to a bloody confrontation at a house on Whidbey Island where, following a two-hour shootout and a refusal to surrender to authorities, Mathews was killed.

All of this is the subject of the new crime thriller The Order, releasing in theaters December 6, which traces the group’s campaign of violence through the eyes of a fictional FBI agent Terry Husk (played by Jude Law), who begins looking into the activities of Mathews (played by Nicholas Hoult) and his group. Though filmed in Canada, it still manages to paint a comprehensive portrait of the period and the mark it left on the region. Director Justin Kurzel was drawn to the project by its contemporary relevance.

“It didn’t feel like a period film. A lot of the story felt shockingly now,” Kurzel says. “It effortlessly spoke to a lot of things that are going on today.”

Specifically, Kurzel, who as an Australian was unfamiliar with much of this history, was surprised that “something like ‘The Turner Diaries’ had lived in the shadows for so long and was actually much more visible and prevalent” than he thought it was. He is referring to a 1978 book widely considered to be one of the most hateful ever written, consisting of a “diary” of a fictional member of a white nationalist group who takes part in a violent overthrow of the government that culminates in the mass murder of all non-whites and Jewish people. It has been the inspiration for multiple hate attacks and assassinations, from the 1984 murder of radio host Alan Berg by the Order, which the film also depicts, to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

“When you suddenly see with January 6th, little nooses hung up as sort of props, that is speaking to a very particular chapter in ‘The Turner Diaries,’ the ‘Day of the Rope.’ People carrying around a book like ‘The Turner Diaries,’ you start to question, ‘Well how did this thing start to grow? How has it become a present book within a lot of hate groups?’” Kurzel says. “The heart of it, it got under my skin.” 

While they didn’t shoot here, Kurzel says he did visit the region a couple of times for research, as he was committed to capturing everything as authentically as he could and creating a believably remote period film look.

This is most felt in one brief yet critical scene where Hoult’s Mathews talks with fellow white supremacist Richard Butler from North Idaho, who in real life would be indicted for seditious conspiracy, out on an isolated road. Butler tries to convince him to stop with the robberies, but only because he is concerned about the blowback to the cause, chillingly explaining that they can find just as much success for their shared racist goals by infiltrating political institutions like Congress and the Senate.

“That was always a crystal ball type moment that I felt in the script of the past talking to the present. I found it really interesting that within the Aryan Nation there were these two opposing methods,” Kurzel says. “One is that no one is going to listen unless we’re extreme and the other is actually the only way to have proper influence is to go by stealth and infiltrate these common systems.” 

As for the climactic shootout on Whidbey Island, Kurzel says he always knew his film would end with Husk coming face-to-face with the man he’s been chasing, trying to take him alive so as not to make him a martyr.

“You want to be faithful to what happened and, at the same time, you’re bringing characters, story, and plot together in a way that needs to speak to the film you’re trying to tell. That’s always really difficult with true stories,” Kurzel says. “There was a sense of Husk trying to prevent or feeling as though Bob’s final act would be a kind of martyrdom act and how he felt as though he was going to stop that.... That became the focus of the tension at the end.” 

The film leaves this tension lingering. As the closing text lays out before the credits, it was nearly two years before all the other surviving members of The Order were put behind bars. And the blueprint that they followed continues to be a driving force for those looking to stoke hate and fear in the Pacific Northwest and across the country.