Beautiful but absolutely frightening movie

TheBlueHairedLawyer

I'm a big fan of horror movies, and I came across this one, which isn't at all a horror movie, at a horror video store. I asked the cashier why it was labeled as such. He told me he'd seen this sci-fi tragedy and that it was far more shocking and disturbing than anything Stephen King or John Carpenter can come up with, so I bought it.

The Day After follows several people/families in Kansas, mainly Russell Oakes, a doctor at the Kansas City hospital. He tries to call his family when suddenly several nuclear bombs are released, knocking him over in his car as a blinding flash of light goes off. Buildings are demolished beyond recognition, factories are blown away. Cows and horses are vaporized until their shadows glow. A little boy is blinded when he stares directly into the flash.

While this is undoubtedly one of the most disturbing moments, the worst is yet to come as the survivors begin to fall into rapid dementia and death from the radiation. One man, Stephen, tries to rescue a girl who is crazily running through the radioactive outdoors in what I can only describe as a "cheerful depression". It's highly disturbing, and the parents are heartbroken when they have to explain to their children that their pet dog will die because it can't come in the house. The only one able to find hope is Dr. Oakes, who, poisoned and dying from radiation, arrives at his old home and finds a family living in the charred remains of his home, offering him food and crying with him.

Only one other movie have I seen more terrifying than this one, and that's Threads, a U. K. set movie that came out a year later. The Day After makes nightmares come alive, with its haunting soundtrack and excellent acting.

When I asked my friends to watch it, they said to me, "why the f*ck would I want to see that? The Cold War is over, nobody will ever drop a bomb on Cape Breton Island!" If only they knew that in the wrong hands, a bomb could go off ANYWHERE, at ANY time, with no warning and no places to hide.

score 10/10

TheBlueHairedLawyer 26 October 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3111481/