BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The Couchpotatoes I rate this movie with 6 stars while keeping in mind it has been made in 1984 and so I shouldn't expect high definition and advanced technology. For it's time it's a movie worth watching. It looked like the kind of movie you could expect at that time, more a documentary on how to react after a nuclear attack and fallout. Or a propaganda movie on how evil the Russians are. But then I would expect this movie been made by the Americans as it was normal in those days to teach the kids who the big enemy was. But it's in Sheffield, and I couldn't get the feeling of watching a fictional movie but more a kit on how to survive a nuclear blast and what will the consequences be you will face. I totally can see this movie been shown at school, as a mandatory watch. It's not mindblowing acting, it's just raw, and it makes you think about nuclear power and evil humanity. Not bad to watch once for a movie from that era.

thejcowboy22 This movie hits you from all sides visually and fervidly. Yet dated in 1984 before the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9-11 the reality of the 11th hour couldn't be more accurate. Parallel events leading up to that day of nuclear annihilation. In this made for television BBC production, we focus on the industrial gray town of Sheffield, England. The plot centers around the local stage, two families, the Kemp's and the Beckett's. Also the world stage with the United States and Soviet Russia in an attempt to capture the Iranian oil fields as the grand prize. As the days draw nearer to the Apocalypse as the Writer Barry Hines has each date typed before a new scene we see world events and tensions grow as War is eminent.As for the local side Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale) and his pregnant girl friend (Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher)are planning to get married as Ruth watches Royal air-force jets fly by. Mundane problems of daily life fill the local scene but as the days progress you see anti- war rallies in the streets as other world events like a US Naval ship are destroyed as the domino effect leading to a complete nuclear confrontation. Local authorities are talking about evacuating people and shelters for the masses but it's all talk as Judgement Day grows near. The aftermath hits you so hard. The visual and the hopelessness of dark days filled with smoke and destruction and how are characters react to their new ungodly surroundings. I've watched my share of Nuclear war films and documentaries throughout my many years and this docudrama comes as close to reality as it gets. The reality is get together and make a plan to save the huge populations in an event of terror. The real answer is, there is no plan in an event and we, the lucky ones who survive the fallout will end up like savages fighting for scrapes of food and water using simple gardening tools hoping that something will grow for the next harvest. Powerful television from England and as real as reality can get and the accuracy although certain events have passed the probability for World War is upon us closer than we ever imagined. I give this one seven nuclear war heads.

nekosensei Having lived through both the initial cold war era of "Dr. Strangelove," "Fail Safe" and "On The Beach" and the Reagan-inspired panic that produced "The Day After," "Testament" and "Threads," and having watched them all in the sociopolitical context in which they were made, I'd say "Threads" is the only one worth watching now in terms of what it has to offer on the subject of nuclear war. Kubrick's pop art masterpiece is still the go-to classic for purposes of entertainment and cinematic appreciation, but this is the film that will graphically illustrate to you what the actual sight of a mushroom cloud going off in your vicinity will do to you (you'll pee your pants) and what the actual effects will be on you and your community (hint: it will NOT provide opportunities for tour de force performances by Jason Robards, Jane Alexander or Peter Sellers.) I went back and watched this again after seeing some vintage British documentaries and PSAs about civil defense during nuclear war on Youtube (particularly the eerie "Protect And Survive" TV spots with their scary little jingle, which are used with frightening effect in this film.) The film's scriptwriter Barry Hines is clearly pointing out what a steaming load the public has been given about the survivability of nuclear war. Without the grand dramatic gestures of the other epics mentioned above, this modest film demonstrates with much more dramatic power how unfathomably inhuman the people at the top are to subject their fellow human beings to this ultimate in sadistic threats.One other thing that I think makes this film more effective than the others mentioned above and more worth watching is its universal dimension, applicable not only to the nuclear scenario but to modern warfare in general with its monstrous emphasis on mass destruction. Hines was speaking to a British audience to which the horrors of the Blitzkrieg were still vivid living memories, and this film, even with its frugal Thatcher-era BBC special effects budget, succeeds in making you feel the trauma of being trapped in a landscape reduced to chunks of concrete and rotting corpses, where survival means literally living like a rat. See it, and the next time you hear someone saying we should bomb the daylights out of this or that country, you might point out to them that bombing a civilian population entails crimes against humanity that they might want to think twice about involving themselves in, even on a purely moral level.The film is introduced with footage of a spider spinning silk from its abdomen, while a narrator compares the structure of human civilization to the interconnected threads of a spider's web. We then see the finished web. It's a pretty thing, but from our perspective fragile. Also a trap.

andrewjeff Everybody needs to see this once in their lives (politicians especially).It demonstrates vividly, brutally, and with no punches pulled- that no one gains from nuclear war, and that the consequences are devastating for decades, if not centuries afterwards. It is also the first film ever, I believe, to show the impact of a "nuclear winter".The film is very unlike the American offering of the time (The Day After), as it adopts a semi-documentary approach, which gives it realism and authenticity.I was genuinely unnerved by this film, and I am sure it played its part in stalling nuclear proliferation internationally. Nobody could watch this and seriously wish to continue thinking that there is anything to be gained by a nuclear strike.Brilliant. 10/10 in every department. The use of "neo-real" casting (i.e. unknown actors) made this all the more chilling.