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 think it would be useless to repeat all that the other users have said about "Threads" since I cannot do better but agree with everything. This has to be THE most graphic representation of nuclear war. And I used to think "The Day After" was disturbing.

I was able to cope to the whole movie, but let's say it wasn't easy at all. I can still hear in my head the yells of the panicked citizens as the mushroom cloud rises in the distance when it hits Crewe... or see the bottles of milk... or the corpse (which bears a striking resemblance with E.T.!) burning in the firestorm... or see survivors keeping as gold what is taken nowadays as granted: supermarket plastic bags... and what they put inside is simply disgusting.

When I found out my local video store had a copy of this film, I rushed to get it, as I was impatient to see this movie I have heard so much about. The impatience to see the movie was rewarded by nothing more than a really bad aftertaste of radioactive fallout.

I liked the movie not for the quality of the actors, but for the overall realistic representation of the holocaust and for the great job done with a small budget. I give a thumbs up to that.

Every zombie and vampire movie ever made are Disney cartoons compared to Threads. One begins to realize the complete impotence of Hollywood crap like The Walking Dead and 100 variations of Vampire films. There is absolutely no need to see a horror film after viewing this piece; no horror film ever made could even have a tenth of its impact. The ghastly scenes are too numerous to mention; the horror all too real and unspeakable. The lucky ones are those who were killed instantly. A fable about a nuclear attack in England hits the bullseye for horror. Mr. Hines has created a horror masterpiece. The only thing is that vampires and zombies are fantasies; these survivors of a nuclear holocaust are real-life people. Well, I would not exactly call them people, but lower life forms of animals, as the human race would no longer exist as we know it. Only subhuman animals seeking water, food, shelter and clothing. This is the Rolls Royce of Nuclear Holocaust films. And now we have the US-Russia crisis over Ukraine. How much different is that from the one portrayed in the film? Not much. Might be time to stock up on bottled water, canned foods, a first aid kit, a supply of generic drugs, and a 38 with lots of cartridges and head for that remote cabin at the lake.

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.