Threads

This is easily the best TV movie I've ever seen, and honestly, it might just be one of the best movies full stop I've ever seen.

It's hard to imagine the premise of a country falling apart after a nuclear attack being executed more effectively than this. The reduced budget works to the film's favour, as many of the settings look very real, the acting is naturalistic, and the blend of stock footage with limited special effects is far more convincing and genuine-feeling than high budget 80s, 90s, or even 2000s effects could produce.

There's nothing Hollywood, here. There's a sense of unflinching brutality and honesty that makes the already terrifying premise that much more devastating.

You might think the film's age and TV movie nature would make the disturbing content more manageable and less real, but that doesn't happen at all. The acting is almost 100% raw and believable. The effects never look cheesy. The violence and horrific imagery isn't at all toned down. It's remarkable and horrifying in equal measure.

Threads is without a doubt one of the bleakest and most distressing films I've ever seen, but two hours flew past, and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. There was no part of me that wanted to scroll through Facebook or multitask with some household chores while watching this. I was glued to the screen.

The most effective moment is when the sound goes out for a moment or two during the sequence where the bombs are being dropped. Also worth noting is that shot with the lady staring into the camera, which will haunt me, and the manner in which the last half hour or so is done with almost no dialogue, and for good reason. It's mesmerising.

The voiceover and documentary-ish presentation could make this cheesy, but they don't. It adds to the believability, and such techniques weren't overused at all.

Nuclear weapons don't discriminate against their victims in the same way this movie doesn't discriminate against its characters. You could be rich, poor, a child, or even a cute household pet- it doesn't matter. This movie isn't afraid to show the deaths of anyone, and even more chilling is the way some main characters just disappear after the bombs fall, with the audience being left almost certain that whatever happened, their fates were not positive.

I can't say enough good things about this, and I am shocked by just how effective it was. A must watch, although be prepared to feel pretty rotten afterwards...

I've always said that no film can really scare you as an adult as films scared you when you were a kid. My benchmark for that being watching 'The Omen' on video when i was about 13, nothing has ever quite lived up to it in the effect it had on me.

Rewatching 'Threads' a while back makes me change my mind.

I remember first seeing it in Ireland on the BBC when I guess i was about 14. Even in Ireland, a neutral country, anxiety about nuclear war was a big thing when we were kids in the 80's.

'Threads' does really get to you, its very unsettling and disturbing. Unlike fictional horror films, 'Threads' is hugely different in one respect - it's real. This is what would happen, you can't distance yourself by saying it's make believe. There are still thousands of nuclear weapons armed and primed to be launched within minutes, 24 hours a day, everyday. Now we even have a country, the US, that says it's ready to use them, even if no one else does first.

Rewatching it, the dated production values don't detract from the film's power. It seems to bring the film even closer to the ordinary and the everyday. It's the film's ordinariness that makes it so viscerally disturbing - Hollywood special effects would at least have allowed you to distance yourself from it somewhat. In fact the film is more realistic for not having them. Someone else mentioned the scene of the woman in the shopping centre urinating where she stood out of pure terror as she sees the bomb go off a mile or two away from her - thats the scene that stayed with me the most too.

Its depressing to think in 2004 we are living in a world where politicians are again talking about 'winnable' wars using nuclear weapons. In many things in life you get a second chance if you make mistakes, I don't think nuclear weapons use will give us the luxury of finding out afterwards was it all worth it. Watch "Threads' and see if you think 'winnable' nuclear war is something you want to give yourself or your children.

I first saw "Threads" in high school, and saw it again recently as a grown adult. It does make a measure how old you are when viewing this movie; you take the actions on screen more seriously.

"Threads" plays like BBC documentary about a catastrophic nuclear war, interjecting live scenes with a bland monologue and various statistics, although one wonders what audience would be viewing this documentary.

Since it does play like a documentary, it feels no need to either overplay events or sugarcoat things for our sensibilities. There's no speeches or heroic actions, everything occurs as it happens, no matter how horrifying.

The gore is moderate (it was a TV movie after all) but is unsettling because it's taken to be real. Throughout you look for some hopeful thought to intrude, even comic relief, but "Threads" stares you down, making you watch the horror and woe to the bitter end. There is no hope or salvation, only despair.

It's worth seeing a movie like this as a reminder of the horrors of nuclear war; the threat of a mututal destruction by superpowers seems to be fast fading, but there's always the possibility of terrorists or new enemies.

"Threads" is to nuclear war what "Saving Private Ryan" is to war movies, a landmark film that delivers a strong political message without ever really mentioning it.

I was about eleven or twelve when this harrowing made-for-TV docu-drama was repeated by the BBC, back to back with 'The War Game'. 'The War Game' didn't faze me much, for various reasons, but 'Threads' - that grabbed me instantly and wouldn't let go. It was not only horribly real, seeing a lower-middle class family rather like my own suddenly plunged back into the dark ages by a nuclear holocaust, it was also entirely believable (the cold war was still very much an ongoing concern back in the eighties) and shockingly compelling. I wanted to look away, but couldn't. I wanted to run from the room in fright, but couldn't. For better or worse, this film showed in full, unflinching, uncompromising detail exactly what it would be like if your home town got nuked, and gave us graphic realism in spades. Melting milk-bottles, spontaneous urination, houses reduced to rubble in seconds, burning cats, dead kids, gore, vomit, armed traffic wardens shooting looters, filth, decay, disease...it's certainly not a barrel of laughs, but Mick Jackson's aim was to shut up all the ignorant gung-hos who believed a nuclear war could be "won". He succeeded, unequivocally. The scene that made the deepest impact on me was the ravaged makeshift classroom with a ragged bunch of shell-shocked adults dazedly watching an ancient videotape of a schools programme (Words and Pictures, in fact) in an attempt to regain their numeracy and literacy skills. That was a show we used to watch at school. Work it out for yourself. In short, this is a downbeat, depressing, bleak and utterly horrible film, but I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone. The cold war may be gone, but the threats portrayed are still very real.

Put simply, THREADS takes every disaster movie you've ever seen - even the huge budget offerings from Hollywood - and unceremoniously skewers them on a rusty skewer. Very few films have the ability to suck the life out of a viewer and leave them feeling drained and shaken in quite the same way that this does. The world may have moved on since 1984, but the central message of THREADS - that politicians have the power to pretty much destroy the whole world and wipe out life as we know it in a matter of minutes - remains horribly relevant. So, if you're looking for shocks and jolts, where to start? Burning cats, dead kids, dogs buried in rubble, incinerated babies, mutants, synchronised vomiting, hospital floors awash with excrement, blood and urine, point-blank shootings, stillbirths, characters we've come to know and care about starving to death or slowly dying before our eyes, extreme incompetence on the part of government-appointed officials, radioactive sheep...the list is endless. If you find the scene where the bomb is dropped on Sheffield city centre on a bustling weekday morning upsetting, then I strongly advise you to switch off, because the rest of the film is unremittingly bleak, nauseating and devoid of hope. It will give you nightmares for weeks. THREADS is not a film to be watched, it's a film to be endured, and if you feel you don't have the stomach for it, go with your first instinct and give it a very wide berth. It makes the so-called 'video nasties' look like a frivolous waste of time.