Good start, but then it gets ruined

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

There's not really a lot of insight you can offer into this infamous TV movie that depicts the aftermath of a nuclear attack on a British city. It's a superficial film, made without subtext, purely designed to present a 'what if?' scenario and then play it out to its ultimate, nihilistic climax. I found it to be utterly grim and depressing, a warning shout against the ultimate in evil: the nuclear bomb.The film is low budget and cast with unfamiliar actors who play normal people, without any kind of fancy acting. It's just as if they're playing themselves. The first half sets up the inevitable and the second half shows what happens to the various survivors. The special effects are absolutely EXCELLENT; this must have been made on a relatively low budget, and yet the nuclear attack is utterly convincing. I really appreciate the way the barren, devastated landscape is brought to life, full of ruined buildings and mutilated corpses.Events that play out are realistic in the extreme; be warned there's no happy ending in sight here, just a ruthless devotion to showing 'what is'. I found it completely upsetting and affecting, full of images (melting bodies and milk bottles) that will stay in my mind for a long time to come. Imagine the nuclear bomb nightmare in TERMINATOR 2 increased to filmic length: that's THREADS in a nutshell.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I was terrified of the prospect of nuclear war. The long Cold War years stretched on, and as a young teen, circa 1978, I decided I had to get on with living - or go nuts. This I did and so was largely unmoved by Threads. Which sounds dreadful, but that's the way it was. Ever since Ronald Reagan had been elected as American President in 1980, the left wing press and the dear old leftie BBC (which has never obeyed the impartiality clause of its charter) had been bigging up the terror even more. And Threads was another example of that. Fortunately, Gorbachev arrived in 1985, and the Cold War ice melted rapidly. The second half of the 1980s was nothing like the fearful 70s or early 80s. Of course, being a leftie myself, I had my doubts when Thatcher declared Gorbachev was a man we could do business with, but capitalism was certainly better than incineration. Threads is a dreadful drama that all lefties profess to remember and to say summed up the fears of the entire decade. Nonsense. Remember Gorbachev. Read the newspapers of 1985-1989. Remember reality. The Cold War was over well before the Soviet Union crumbled. In fact, Gorbachev himself stated that it formally ended in late 1989. And the four years leading up to that were certainly nothing like what had gone before.

Everybody needs to see this once in their lives (politicians especially).It demonstrates vividly, brutally, and with no punches pulled- that no one gains from nuclear war, and that the consequences are devastating for decades, if not centuries afterwards. It is also the first film ever, I believe, to show the impact of a "nuclear winter".The film is very unlike the American offering of the time (The Day After), as it adopts a semi-documentary approach, which gives it realism and authenticity.I was genuinely unnerved by this film, and I am sure it played its part in stalling nuclear proliferation internationally. Nobody could watch this and seriously wish to continue thinking that there is anything to be gained by a nuclear strike.Brilliant. 10/10 in every department. The use of "neo-real" casting (i.e. unknown actors) made this all the more chilling.

Mick Jackson's BBC docu-drama opens with one implicit warning:"In an urban society, everything connects. Each person's needs are fed by the skills of many others.Our lives are woven together in a fabric, but the connections that make society strong also make it vulnerable."His warning concludes with a fragile strand of spider silk and fades into a fully woven, menacing orb of spider web.I saw this post-nuclear apocalypse film on the force of Guardian's recommendation for scariest horror films. But I don't consider it the scariest horror I've seen for two reasons: Threads is not really horror by formalistic standards as it can't be qualified by the usual sub-genres (slasher, supernatural, psychological to name a few). Second, it didn't induce a sense of mounting dread (so keenly attempted by most horror movies) in all 112 minutes of running time.Yet it gave me a nightmare the same night I was done watching.So what's the big deal? There are tonnes of shows (about wars, nuclear disasters, end-of-the-world) trying to frighten us with gruesome make-up and special effects anyway: Pearl Harbor, The Hills Have Eyes, Children of Men… Well it is here that the film's choice of fictional news footage and anti-aesthetic photography by Andrew Dunn and Paul Morris deserve mention. Amplified by the context of nuclear radiation in a densely populated urban centre, human disfigurement occurring in the thick of those post-disaster scenes were absolutely disturbing to witness.I haven't seen imageries this persistent and lasting since defective humans and severed limbs in movies by Jodorowsky. The video's grainy resolution — likely the result of analogue format on Super VHS back in the 1980s — adds to the tone of cinéma vérité very well. Overall effect is creepy like a scratchy washed-out video in Hideo Nakata's Ringu, combined with the haunting cruelty in war photos captured by James Natchwey.Screenwriter Barry Hines hypothesizes the fate of people living in Sheffield when the Soviet Union detonates a warhead above the North Sea. I will not delve into details with a blow-by-blow account of the fictional brinkmanship in Threads, but essentially, a failed US- led coup in Iran escalates into armed confrontation with the Soviet Union. This crisis culminates in nuclear attacks on NATO bases throughout the region, with the city of Sheffield being one of several targets.Three narrative viewpoints drive the film: documentary aspects are narrated by an omniscient man whom earlier, had warned us of the vulnerability in a system held by connections that interlock too closely. He explains in chronological sequence: how early days of the crisis lead to the melt down of society's economic, social, medical and environmental conditions. And finally, the ultimate collapse of humanity itself. Dramatic arcs are painted through the story of young lovers, Ruth Beckett and Jimmy Kemps. An unplanned pregnancy introduces their respective families (the Becketts and the Kemps) in the mix, effectively setting up these ordinary characters as victims who will suffer for generations to come, acutely and chronically, the full blown effects of this event when nuclear radiation rises and peaks after 3000 megatons of TNT. Another viewpoint follows a small group of council members in Sheffield's Emergency Operations Team.All three units engineer in full force; a scientifically eloquent, nightmarish and realistic narrative of total devastation caused by a nuclear holocaust.Threads may be a faux-documentary but still, it makes for a terrifying watch. Miles ahead of fly-by-night Hollywood disaster flicks, this is a deeply intense social realist drama anchored in credible visual tone and political language. Don't let the fact that it was made back in 1984 fool you into thinking otherwise. Not for the squirmish or faint-hearted.cinemainterruptus.wordpress.com