Apparently there isn’t enough nightmare fuel in my tank, because over the weekend I watched Threads (1984). Some movies, you can’t unsee.
While somewhat dated, Threads is a chilling nuclear-holocaust…docudrama? That’s the approach used by writer Barry Hines and director Mick Jackson: charting a potential path to nuclear war in an escalating conflict between the US and the USSR, right at the height of the Cold War. The viewpoint city is Sheffield in the United Kingdom, and our nominal protagonist is Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher), a young woman about to shotgun-marry her boyfriend Jimmy (Reece Dinsdale). Through their eyes, and many others, Threads depicts the lives of the people of Sheffield, including those officials charged with overseeing emergency response, as they prepare for the worst. Offscreen, though, military tensions steadily build in the Middle East, centered on (gulp) Iran. Impersonal newscasters drone in the background as the citizens go about their business, until suddenly, their business no longer matters.
I mean, holy fucking shit. I knew Threads by reputation, but even that much warning can’t prepare you. Mixing sonorous narration, typewriter-ticking title cards, cold factual assertions, and fragmented drama, the film feels as innocuous as a BBC documentary — for a while, anyway. Threads is not built like the disaster film it resembles, however, the ones that melodramatically work their way toward explosive climaxes. It has a different agenda, which plays out in gruesome, unnerving fashion during the film’s unflinching second half. If you go in thinking its mission is to entertain the average viewer, by all means think again. But if you know anyone in the world excited about the prospects of detonating nuclear weapons, force them to watch this. It may be an artifact, but it’s still terrifying and, sadly, relevant.
