Are there any bleaker films out there?

I'd agree with The Road, albeit maybe not as bleak as Threads. What about When The Wind Blows - the couple in the film are the only ones to survive fallout and they stay naively optimistic until the end. They may not be bleaker but they were bleak nonetheless.

I was literally just about to name this film.

It's one of the most nihilistic/fatalistic films ever.

Never heard of this one. I've just rented it on YouTube 👍

I watched that in connection with my IR degree at St Andrews. I agree it is depressing, but Threads pips it for me because the thing about 'Fireflies' is that we know that, however badly the characters suffered, there's a world out there of people who got on with their lives, and ultimately Japan will recover and thrive. With Threads, the scenarios the characters are experiencing are being played out, as far as we can tell, all over the world, and all humanity is bound for oblivion.

Like one of the earlier posters I was thinking about Letters from a Dead Man as a likely candidate. The thing that stands out to me in that movie is how utterly filthy everything is presented: Absolutely nothing is left but a radioactive wasteland of ruined concrete bunkers, rust, decay, sickness, orphans, suicides and depression. And it all takes place in a sickly yellowish atmosphere no-one survives in without massive protection. The world (and mankind with it) seems to be utterly doomed.

Threads have much of the same bleak outlook, but while it seemed like the UK was going to hell I never really got the impression the entire world was in the same situation. In LFADM the protagonist openly speculate that the human race faces extinction.

On the other hand, one of the strongest aspects of Threads is to show how society collapse, while in LFADM everything is in chaos from the beginning.

"Fail Safe" scared the *beep* out of me. I saw it in my college class and that ending....

I second these. Dead Man's Letters is the best nuclear apocalypse film i've seen and Come and See is one of the best war films i've seen as well. Two of my favourites.


"Having a heart is heartbreaking."