The Most Realistic Apocalypse Movie Practically Disappeared for 20 Years (original) (raw)

Image by Annamaria Ward

Updated Oct 15, 2023, 2:00 PM EDT

Matthew is a features writer for Collider currently based in Manchester. In his spare time he likes to read, write, obsess over Batman and complain about his Wordle score.

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Summary

• Threads is a terrifying and realistic depiction of a dystopian future where nuclear war erupts between the US and the Soviet Union, leaving millions dead and society in ruins.
• The film focuses on the ordinary citizens, rather than politicians or generals, and explores the long-term consequences of nuclear war, including scarcity of resources, disease, and a freezing winter.
• Despite its low budget, Threads uses stock footage and a detached filmmaking style to create a chilling and authentic portrayal of the horrors of nuclear war, making it a must-watch for those brave enough.

In the grand mosaic of cinema, there exists a subset of films for which the term “endurance test” was coined. Anyone who has spent enough time in online film circles will be familiar with them, and forcing yourself to watch them has turned into a strange rite of passage any self-described cinephile must eventually undertake. Come and See and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom are two of the most cited examples, attracting both critical praise and utter disdain that makes them ideal entries on “greatest films you’ll only watch once” lists. Threads is another prime candidate, and could well be the most terrifying of all. But whereas the aforementioned examples utilized their fictionalized narrative to explore the horrors of the past, Threads looks in the other direction, conceptualizing a dystopian future where conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts into nuclear Armageddon. The film was released at the height of the Cold War and presented its narrative with such shocking brutality that it disappeared from our screens for almost 20 years. Today, it is more widely available, and given how the Doomsday Clock has only edged closer to midnight in the decades since, it remains disturbingly relevant.

What Is 'Threads' About?

Two men in Threads

Image Via the BBC

While a basic overview of Threads’ plot might make it appear derivative of other films in the apocalypse subgenre, director Mick Jackson (who inexpiably would later direct such crowd-pleasers as The Bodyguard) and writer Barry Hines imbue the film with a unique tone by keeping the focus on the ultimate victim of such an event — the ordinary citizen. This is not a film about squabbling politicians and bloodthirsty generals. In Threads, these archetypes exist only as disembodied voices on a half-watched television, filling the airwaves of the local pub while teenagers search for their latest catch. Welcome to Sheffield – an industrial city in the heart of Northern England whose sights would be immediately familiar to a 1980s working-class viewer, struggling their way through a recession, rising unemployment, and the repercussions of the 1982 Falklands War. Such concerns are a dominating presence in the lives of Ruth (Karen Meagher) and Jimmy (Reece Dinsdale), a young couple hastily assembling a decent life after learning of her unplanned pregnancy. For most of its opening act, Threads isn't dissimilar to your typical kitchen sink soap opera like **Coronation Street**… but as the saying goes, you only recognize your best days after you’ve already lived them.

As the story progresses, background details hint at a greater threat occurring thousands of miles away. The Soviet Union and the United States are locked in rapidly escalating hostilities owing to the former’s invasion of Iran, and despite attempts to resolve the situation peacefully, it’s clear that this conflict is only heading in one direction. As such, at 8:30 am British time (or 3:30 am in Washington, the time when the American response would be at its slowest), nuclear warheads are detonated across the North Sea, plunging the world into chaos. The United Kingdom – having pledged to reinforce NATO – receives the brunt of this attack. "Horrifying" doesn’t begin to describe it. Mayhem in the streets, bodies eviscerated beyond recognition, cities reduced to rubble in an instant – all portrayed with such unflinching objectiveness you’d swear it was footage from a real assault. By the time it subsides, between 2.5 and 9 million people are dead across the British Isles, Jimmy among them.

But it doesn’t stop there. While a relentless public information campaign by the now-deceased government had helped to prepare the country for the immediate consequences of a nuclear explosion, what had gone overlooked were the effects it would have weeks, months, and even decades down the line, and it's here where the film’s most harrowing moments are found. Food is scarce and humanity scarcer, reducing civilized people to crazed and selfless animals. After six weeks, the exposure to high levels of radiation causes a sudden death wave, flooding the already overcrowded hospitals. Shortly after, the fallout from the bombs plunges Britain into a freezing winter that wreaks havoc upon the surviving population – a population that also has to contend with a sharp increase in cataracts and cancer when sunlight does return due to the damaged ozone layer. The film explores these events in painstaking detail, leaving no agonizing truth unexplored. By the time we’re blessed with the end credits, ten years have passed since the initial attacks, and life in 1990s Britain is virtually identical to that of the medieval period. On second thoughts, maybe it’s not a surprise that Jackson would shift gears to more uplifting films. Directing Threads would give anyone enough misery to last a lifetime.

'Threads' Had to be Made on a Minuscule Budget by the BBC

Image via BBC

It’s a miracle that Threads turned out as powerful as it did. When Alasdair Milne, the Director-General of the BBC, commissioned it, he did so after viewing the 1965 documentary The War Game – a film so controversial that, by the 1980s, it had effectively been airbrushed out of BBC history (despite it winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature). Why Milne would decide to reignite this debate is anyone’s guess – perhaps spurred on by the similarly themed American TV film, The Day After – but doing so left him with a major problem. The BBC was not a major Hollywood studio, meaning that even a lavish production like Threads would have to be made on only minimal resources – specifically a paltry £400,000 that would extend to a mere seventeen-day shooting schedule and would see tomato ketchup becoming a vital ingredient for the makeup department. Asking someone to make a comprehensive depiction of nuclear war on the budgetary equivalent of two planks of wood and a roll of gaffer tape would be no easy task, but Milne had just the right people in mind.

On paper, Mick Jackson and Barry Hines were odd choices. Jackson had only previously worked on documentary films, while Hines was better known as the author of slice-of-life novels like A Kestrel for a Knave (the basis of Ken Loach’s seminal film Kes). Threads was a marked departure from their usual comfort zones, and there was little to suggest that they’d make the leap from small-scale neorealism to special-effects-laden atrocity with ease (especially since it quickly became apparent that they didn’t get on). However, their hiring turned out to be nothing short of genius. If there’s one aspect of Threads a reviewer could point to explain why it’s such a formidable piece of speculative fiction, it would be the combination of Jackson’s fly-on-the-wall directing and Hines’ social-realistic writing. Together they create a radioactive-filled environment that screams authenticity at every turn, strengthened by their copious amounts of research that saw them becoming self-taught experts on the topic. As a platform with which to educate a nation about the single greatest threat to its existence, Milne couldn’t have picked anyone better.

'Threads' Is So Disturbing Because It's So Realistic

Ruth standing in front of rubble in Threads

Image Via the BBC

Looking back, it’s extraordinary how well Jackson and Hines were able to weaponize their shoestring budget to their advantage. It has often been said that constraints make you more creative, not less, and Threads is a stunning example of this. Nit-pickers can criticize the ample use of stock footage during the film’s second half, but thanks to Jackson purposefully aping their brutal iconography in his newly shot footage, there are multiple times when it’s hard to distinguish the real calamities from the staged ones. Similarly, the frequent title cards and omnipotent narration courtesy of BBC broadcaster Paul Vaughan may have served to fill gaps that his limited arsenal wouldn’t allow for, but they also contribute to Threads feeling like the latest film from the real Protect and Survive information campaign that the government had been running since 1974. Such details would be lost on contemporary viewers, but for audiences of the time, it made Threads feel uncomfortably palpable. No wonder its premiere was described as “the night the country didn’t sleep”.

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But the most terrifying part of Threads is how matter-of-fact it is. This is not a film overloaded with clichés and sentimentality. Instead, it deals exclusively with reality, no matter how chilling or blood-curdling that is. While a lesser director would try to underline the misery like they’re afraid someone in the cheap seats might misconstrue what’s happening, Jackson favors a detached style of filmmaking that lets the narrative speak for itself. Jimmy’s death – a prime moment for Jackson to proclaim his directing talents – is treated with such casualness that viewers might not even realize it has happened. He’s not the only major character to vanish, creating the impression of a world where death is not only common but borderline mundane. Jackson doesn’t shy away from the tragedy, but he’s careful not to fetishize it either. In one scene, two grieving parents discover the body of their child – a horrific moment that is elegantly conveyed by only showing the child’s foot protruding from beneath a pile of rubble, after which the film cuts away. Jackson understands how far to push the graphic content, and by leaving the worst to our imagination, he’s able to craft the perfect representation of a waking nightmare.

'Threads' Has Rarely Been Shown on the BBC

When Threads premiered on BBC Two on 23 September 1984, it avoided the backlash that had condemned The War Game before anyone had even seen it. The film earned itself the highest ratings for the channel that week and went on to win four BAFTAs during the ensuing awards season. However, following a repeated showing in 1985 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which also saw the first television screening of The War Game), Threads departed from British screens for almost 20 years. It took until 2003 – the same year as the invasion of Iraq – for the BBC to screen it again, after which it returned to the archives where it has remained ever since. Thankfully, some much-needed rereleases on home media and the advent of streaming have removed the barriers that once made low-quality DVDs the only reliable way of viewing it, ensuring that Jackson and Hines’ masterpiece can now be watched by anyone brave enough to face it.

But why has the BBC been so reluctant to screen Threads? Quite simply, Jackson and Hines did their job too well. No one is hesitant to show Dr. Strangelove or Crimson Tide, for example, because their depiction of nuclear warfare is firmly entrenched in the make-believe world of cinema. This isn’t to say these approaches are bad – Dr. Strangelove is a satirical masterpiece that can easily count itself amongst Stanley Kubrick’s best works – but it’s unlikely that anyone would find themselves lying awake in the dead of night after a screening, frozen in place by the horrors they had just witnessed. The same can not be said for Threads. There’s a reason it carries an ominous reputation – because it feels real. Uncomfortably so. This is not a film you enjoy. This is a film you watch in open-eyed terror while thanking God that you don’t live in a world with such trigger-happy leaders (at least, that’s what you’re supposed to do…). The threat of nuclear annihilation might not be as pervasive today as it was during the Cold War, but it’s still a concern that will persist for generations to come. Perhaps if the whole world was forced to watch Threads, things would be different.