Review of Threads (1985) by Russ M — 18 Aug 2007

I DO NOT recommend this movie to anyone with a weak stomach or faint heart. I have seen many disturbing movies in my time but this one is THE most disturbing of them all. I saw it first in the early nineties (I wasn't allowed to watch it when it originally aired in 1984) and also recently.

I am more disturbed and moved as an adult than when I was younger. The sheer realism that is portrayed in this made-for-TV-movie (yes, folks, TV!) is beyond belief. Told in a retrospective documentary style, the narrator coldly explains what has happened during and since the nuclear exchange.

The effects of fallout, radiation sickness, nuclear winter, the collapse of government, martial law and absolute chaos is told with such pathos that you can't help but feel you are actually a part of it.

Even though this film is set in the eighties and dated by technological means, the overall story is timeless and makes you wonder just how close we actually came to experiencing this catastrophe.