YMMV / Threads

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Jane mentally handicapped, possibly due to birth defects resulting from in utero radiation exposure? Or is she just severely socially maladjusted as a result of her generation being born into a world without proper upbringing or education, which is largely inimical to human life?
• Angst Aversion: This is a very hard film to sit through, as it display the aftermath of a nuclear war in a very bleak, horrifying and realistic fashion, ending on a Downer Ending. Unsurprisingly, many have refused to watch the film because of how bleak and depressing it is.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Although the film was generally very well-received by critics and audiences alike, it also had its share of detractors who took great pains to note that they understood the anti-war message Hines was pushing but found the extremely bleak tone to undermine the effectiveness of the message and make the film an unpleasant slog. As with most movies like this, the question has been raised of whether it's worth using such trauma-inducing or otherwise disturbing material without any meaningful catharsis at the end.
• Fandom Rivalry: A number of viewers are split over whether The Day After or Threads is the superior film. Fans of The Day After often dismiss Threads as excessively bleak and feel that the Bowdlerization in the US film actually gave enough hope in it to spur a push towards nuclear disarmament, while fans of Threads criticize The Day After as too unrealistic and praise the UK film for its greater research. Then there's a third camp that appreciates both films and views the rivalry as a huge case of Misaimed Fandom, given that the movies were never meant to be compared to one another like that.
• It Was His Sled: Sheffield becomes extremely hot very quickly, local residents do not enjoy it much.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Anne Sellors, whose acting career begins and ends with her role in this film as "woman who urinates herself".
  • "There was the skeleton of...a cat! A cat's...skeleton!"
  • The random shot of an ET Figurine burning has also become a running joke for people, with one fake video on the film's ending having the caption "ET SWAGG".
• Moment of Awesome: The effect this movie, alongside The Day After, had on public opinion was striking, extending as far as to influence the government. Before, both sides of the Cold War believed that nuclear war, should it occur, was containable and survivable. After the airing of these movies, however, world leaders began seeking rapprochement and renewed their commitment to nuclear disarmament.
• Narm:
  • Ronald Reagan's offscreen cameo is very obviously provided by an impressionist. If it's intended to be Reagan.
  • The airburst nuke that destroys Britain's power grid with an EMP is represented by three shots of exploding power transformers, plus one shot of an exploding clothes iron. While household appliances definitely would be broken by an EMP, Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking definitely comes into play!
  • The Sheffield city managers are remarkably skilled and dispassionate while mapping the locations of nuclear blasts. It comes across as them being as proficient and bored as if they were doing a daily traffic report.
• Paranoia Fuel: One of the most disturbing things about the film is how completely plausible the scenario that leads up to the war is. Especially since this movie came out at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were more hostile to each other than ever, the idea of one international crisis causing the situation to escalate out of control seemed highly likely. Especially in light of later revelations that the situation did almost do exactly that one year earlier.
• Realism-Induced Horror: A big thing about what makes Threads so damn terrifying is that all the horrors that occur in this movie could actually happen in real life in the event of an actual nuclear war. It's clear that the movie did its homework on the effects of nuclear war, fallout, and nuclear winter. Not to mention the overall collapse of society and environmental destruction that would also result from it all.
• Signature Scene:
  • The guard at the detention camp whose face is covered with bloody bandages. His image is so iconic that it made it onto the cover of The Radio Times the month the film first aired, which attracted controversy for how disturbing the image was.
  • The initial attack itself is another example. It almost literally seared itself into the memory of a generation of Britons, with such traumatizing imagery as burnt corpses buried beneath piles of rubble and a cat writhing in pain as it's seared by the blast wave.
  • The woman cradling her dead child in the ruins after the attack, staring unblinkingly at Ruth as she passes by. It serves as the page image for the Tear Jerker page for a reason.
• Special Effects Failure: Though being only a split second, all of the buildings destroyed during the shockwave turn from their usual appearance to stock footage of housing being destroyed in QED, often at the wrong angle.
• Spiritual Successor: To the very similar 1965 Docudrama The War Game, though that movie wasn't shown on TV until a year after Threads was released, because the BBC outright refused to broadcast it out of fears of widespread panic back when it was made.
• Squick: The radiation sickness scenes are major examples of this.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: As in The Day After, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to root for any of the characters since they're all fated to die horribly. In fact, Threads is arguably worse in this regard than The Day After, with a full-scale war breaking out as opposed to the limited exchange seen in the American film, with society (and human language) subsequently crumbling to the point that the post-war generation lacks the motor and linguistic skills necessary to rebuild civilization. Then again, the whole point of this film is to demonstrate that in the event of a nuclear war, there will be no happy ending in the aftermath.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Internet reviewer Stuart Ashen revealed in one video that he watched this film in school when he was six years old! He then tells his viewers to look the film up and decide whether or not this is really something they should show to children.
• Values Dissonance: The film uses the word "Mental Retardation" to describe what the children would go through in the aftermath of the attacks, which wouldn't bate an eye back in 1984. Nowadays, it's no longer used as a professional term and is treated as a slur.
• The Woobie:
  • Ruth goes through absolute Hell throughout the course of the film. Her family is murdered by looters, her child's father is apparently killed in the initial bomb blast, she has to give birth to her daughter in a cold, empty barn, then she has to find a way to take care of said child. She spends the rest of her life planting crops to survive for food. Because of the depleted ozone and general radiation levels, she dies in her 30s while looking aged enough to be in her 70s or 80s. Of the leads, she lives the longest, but based on the horror we see her go through, she's in no way luckier than the ones that have died before her.
  • Also, Mr. Kemp. You'd think with three kids to the Beckett family's one, they'd have a better chance of their kids living through the blast. Nope. Michael is confirmed dead in a bomb explosion; the last we see of Allison, she was on her way to the supermarket for last-minute groceries and never comes back; and Jimmy was running through the streets of Sheffield when the bombs were dropping and he's never seen again. Due to their proximity, Kemp and his wife get a severe case of radiation poisoning, and Mrs. Kemp gets fourth degree burns and can barely move. Kemp is forced to watch his wife suffer and die, and when both of them break down weeping saying they wish they were dead/could trade places with Michael, you have to wonder if part of it is to end the suffering they're going through.The last time we see Kemp alive, he's alone, trying and failing to get drunk because he can't keep the whiskey he's traded his cigarettes for down, and weeping over the deaths of his whole family as he listens to the music the electronic game his son used plays. Jesus Christ.

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