A woman, suffering from cancer caused by radiation, drops to the ground while plowing a field... and no one raises their head to look at her. A group of looters make disparaging comments about a dead body under a sheet before one is unceremoniously shot and killed by a soldier. A character desperately bashes a can against a rock to get at the food inside, while an exodus of people walk (and crawl) along the ground around her as an airplane flies overhead, futilely telling people to go back to the city.
If The Day After presented a vision of what nuclear war could look like, Threads takes that vision, dials it up to 11 and presents one of the, if not the, most nihilistic views ever given of what such a scenario would do to the populace of the planet.
The tone of Threads is, to put it mildly, distressing. Haunting and disconcerting images flood the screen once the titular nuclear attack happens midway through the film. Doctors are shown using table salt in lieu of disinfectant to try and stabilize screaming patients. A woman is shown screaming for her son before the sound cuts out amid a nuclear explosion. A character shown dying in her bed, prematurely aged, riddled with cancer and having cataracts in her eyes is the most peaceful death in the entire film. Characters are routinely discarded like tissue paper, and the tone is so nihilistic that it's hard to get fully invested in any of the characters...
...but that's the point — it's an unflinching vision of what would happen in a "realistic" nuclear war, and the commitment to upholding that vision (via director Barry Hines and scientific advisors) lends an air of authenticity to the proceedings, which are inevitably bleak. The acting is excellent, the visuals are stark and horrifying, and it conveys the intended message that such a scenario is not one anyone should ever hope for or accept.
Film As hardcore as a mid-80s apocalypse film gets
A woman, suffering from cancer caused by radiation, drops to the ground while plowing a field... and no one raises their head to look at her. A group of looters make disparaging comments about a dead body under a sheet before one is unceremoniously shot and killed by a soldier. A character desperately bashes a can against a rock to get at the food inside, while an exodus of people walk (and crawl) along the ground around her as an airplane flies overhead, futilely telling people to go back to the city.
If The Day After presented a vision of what nuclear war could look like, Threads takes that vision, dials it up to 11 and presents one of the, if not the, most nihilistic views ever given of what such a scenario would do to the populace of the planet.
The tone of Threads is, to put it mildly, distressing. Haunting and disconcerting images flood the screen once the titular nuclear attack happens midway through the film. Doctors are shown using table salt in lieu of disinfectant to try and stabilize screaming patients. A woman is shown screaming for her son before the sound cuts out amid a nuclear explosion. A character shown dying in her bed, prematurely aged, riddled with cancer and having cataracts in her eyes is the most peaceful death in the entire film. Characters are routinely discarded like tissue paper, and the tone is so nihilistic that it's hard to get fully invested in any of the characters...
...but that's the point — it's an unflinching vision of what would happen in a "realistic" nuclear war, and the commitment to upholding that vision (via director Barry Hines and scientific advisors) lends an air of authenticity to the proceedings, which are inevitably bleak. The acting is excellent, the visuals are stark and horrifying, and it conveys the intended message that such a scenario is not one anyone should ever hope for or accept.