Film Review: Threads

Director: Mick Jackson

A joint venture which the BBC helped fund and produce that looks at the effect a nuclear war would have on Great Britain with the focus mainly being on the Northern city of Sheffield. The film was made in 1984 in the style of a real life documentary and chronicles the build up to the war as well as the effects for years after on the population as a whole and a few characters whose lives we follow. The Director General of the BBC at the time, Alisdair Milne, commissioned the film after watching The War Game which deals with the same topic. The War Game was also banned upon its release in 1965 over concerns that people might commit suicide at its bleak depiction of a post-nuclear war world in the middle of the cold war.

The atomic bomb going off near Sheffield

The threat of a new world war involving nuclear weapons becomes apparent when a US-lead coup d'etat in Iran leads the Soviet Union to invade the Northern area of the country. The political battle is now on as both countries have no desire to back down as a few small skirmishes happen in the Persian gulf between their navies. A full scale war begins after fighting in Northern Iran and the Soviet Union launches a nuclear attack on the UK with a warhead hitting the North sea and more hitting cities around the UK. In Sheffield, the local families witness the nuclear warhead hitting RAF Finningley nearby and for the survivors of the initial bombings there is the threat of radiation poisoning as well as other disease.

The film does a good job of building the tension as news reports on the TV and radio report the escalation of hostilities in Iran with the locals of Sheffield becoming more concerned at the events. The threat of war becomes imminent with the government closing roads to the public and issuing warnings of what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. The whole thing feels almost surreal but given the increasing number of countries developing nuclear weapons its still a very real threat even with the end of the Cold War.

The devastation for the remaining survivors

The effect a nuclear attack would have on the UK is genuinely horrifying, almost seems that immediate death would be the preferred outcome rather than trying to survive the radiation or in a country over-run by diseases like cholera or typhoid. A country decimated down to a population around a sixth of its current levels which is too weak for manual labour where crops can't grow and there is no sunlight. I found the whole experience deeply unsettling and the outdated special effects make it feel even more real. It certainly falls into the category of a film I'm unsure I'd want to sit through again but it will certainly be memorable.

3.5/4 Grim and horrifying depiction of the effects of a nuclear attack