Why Is THREADS Still Upsetting Today?
We could go through all of the geopolitical reasons why THREADS is still bothering audiences today but let’s put all of that aside for a moment and talk about the film as a whole.
THREADS is a 1984 British TV movie that was the first to depict the true consequences of a nuclear war when 210 megatons fall upon the United Kingdom. The film focuses on the northern England town of Sheffield and the pregnant woman Ruth Beckett.
We see as she gives birth, tries to raise her daughter and survives the fallout from what is essentially World War III. This isn’t the kind of nuclear fallout movie that you think it’s going to be for many reasons. There are no zombies, no Max Rockatansky, no one running around in a blue jumpsuit wearing a Pip-Boy. No, this film focuses on the end of society as a whole.
Thousands die from radiation sickness. The ones who perish in the initial blast are the lucky ones. Without any kind of fuel or power, they are unable to bury or burn the mass amounts of dead and diseases like cholera and typhoid begin to run rampant. Ruth is at one point forced to survive on the raw carcasses of radiation poisoned livestock. Due to the ozone layer being damaged, when the sun does return to shine, it means it’s heavy with ultraviolet radiation which increases cancer and cataracts.
These are happy times. I won’t go on with much more of the plot because as troubling as this film is, you need to see it at least once and realized that this could be you. Your neighbor. Your son or daughter.
One thing that THREADS does that THE DAY AFTER (The American equivalent) fails to do is send you leaving with a sense of REAL dread. THE DAY AFTER is a great and competent movie and really hits home with the after-effects of a nuclear war, but not in the way THREADS does. THREADS use actors that aren’t on the marquee at your local movie house. Thus creating almost a documentary feel to it. Making it that much scarier. THE DAY AFTER doesn’t really hit that ball out of the park because when watching it, and seeing folks like Jason Robards or Steve Guttenberg, you are really taken out of the overall vibe to an extent.
THREADS is also the only film that has ever made me uneasy enough to not sleep at night. The bomb sequence in the film shows a woman wet herself upon seeing the visual of the mushroom cloud and I can’t say that I wouldn’t have been part of the rubber sheet brigade either. Yet there is nothing more unsettling than the final scene in the movie and I won’t spoil it here because that you NEED to see. It sums up every bit of terror and torture you have just been through while watching the film
So why is THREADS still upsetting today? Because it could be real. At any time someone could get upset enough to wipe out all of humanity by using the split atom. I’m not on some heavy-handed, anti-nuclear crusade. I am however on a heavy-handed we deserve to survive crusade. For all the bad in this world, there is still good. THREADS showcases what the worst of us can accomplish and serves as a warning that is best summed up by this quote;
“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” — Albert Einstein.
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