For me the apocalyptic movies that happen on a grand scale to the audience just don't convey the terror and confusion on a personal level. I fully believe even today in our media rich society most of us would be taken by complete surprise if a nuclear attack happened, causing mass panic and irrational behavior. Rewatched this movie a few years ago and consideration for the time I grew up in it's still so horrible to me.
shareI saw this when it first came on HBO and thought it played like one of those ABC Afterschool Special or Hallmark films, but realistic. The part with the little boy bleeding out of his butt, the mother wrapping her daughter in sheets, the abandoned houses, and the mother throwing up at the end totally disturbed me for weeks!
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I'm a few years younger than you but it seems you would fit in with the millenials and their short attention span. There was nothing boring about this movie and it didn't need special effects.
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You can't make a movie about nuclear war without special effects!
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I'm really glad that they *didn't* show a nuclear explosion or planes dropping bombs or any of the tired cliches of nuclear destruction movies. We see the same two or three explosions in all those films, it's so predictable. We get the information we need: Russia attacked, most of the US is destroyed in the first wave, that's all we need to know.
Really good movie, the acting by the kids is really well done (not always a given).
This isn't about special effects ('How cool can we make the blast look?') This is about PEOPLE (nuclear war = devastation and human suffering). If all you care about is special effects and you were 'put to sleep' by this film, then you missed the message entirely.
shareTalk about a scarred childhood... I grew up in the 1980's while my father was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC. Those were some crazy times. First off there were movies like this! Next, there was the Challenger explosion (which was showed LIVE at Bowley Elementary School), and finally, I lived 4 blocks away from the Fatal Vision house in which a man murdered his entire family in the 1970's.
Oh, and we were still doing the nuclear war drills at my elementary school. Apparently hiding under a desk is all you need to do to stay safe. Everyone speaks of the 1980's as a time of peace and crazy clothing styles. But for me, it was all about fear -- at least for the early 1980's.
Same here.I remember crying while watching this movie. I was probably about 8 years old and I just knew that the Russians would bomb us at any moment...then I would be the bleeding butt child! I was so troubled by this movie that I asked my mom a million questions about the cold war and nuclear bombs.
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