10 Harrowing Movies That Will Crush Your Soul

2. Threads

Threads is the one TV film on this list and was first broadcast on BBC Two in 1984. It tells the story of the devastating aftermath of a nuclear strike in Britain and how the UK is sent back to the Dark Ages, reduced to a sparsely populated hellscape, and it does this in a matter-of-fact, documentary style that echoes the kitchen sink realism of British cinema at the time.

As a result, Threads is a movie that feels terrifyingly real... and, considering that this is also among the bleakest films ever made, that makes it a completely devastating watch that'll break even the toughest viewers. It is pure nightmare fuel from start to finish, an endlessly miserable symphony of death and despair. 

Nuclear weapons are a terrifying concept, and plenty of pictures have explored their terrible potential really well, yet Threads is perhaps the most effective of them all. And to top it all off, the movie - which was based on extensive research - has been praised as perhaps the most realistic depiction of a nuclear winter to date, so what is seen in Threads could actually happen. That is... too disturbing to think about.