Threads (1984)

Directed by Mick Jackson. Starring Karen Meagher, David Brierly, Reece Dinsdale, Rita May, Phil Rose, Henry Moxon, June Broughton, Harry Beety, (voice) Paul Vaughan.

Sobering, sometimes horrific account of life in Sheffield, England before, during, and after a global nuclear war. Docudrama approach limits intimate dramatic interest, and the film sometimes struggles to negotiate the world stage events with the concerns of a select few doomed individuals in two families joined by the new marriage between Jimmy Kemp (Dinsdale) and pregnant Ruth Beckett (Meagher), but these weren’t top priorities for director Mick Jackson and company. This graphic yet coldly restrained dramatization is relentless in its realism, a series of all-too-plausible events leading to widespread destruction from which there is no smooth recovery—nuclear winter and societal collapse and radiation disease and barbarism make the second half a grimly-rewarding endurance test. Whether by design or due to budget limitations, the crude and lo-fi aesthetic only makes the experience feel more uncomfortably authentic; it’s bound to be too harrowing to inspire topical conversation from most viewers afterward. Originally aired on the BBC as sort of a “Britain’s answer” to the 1983 American TV-movie, The Day After, before a gradual international release in the months that followed.

76/100