Coming In February, 2020: The Day After Review

I have never been a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction and cinema. I realize it is quite popular and trendy these days but to be honest it bores the hell out of me. I could care less about what society looks like two generations after an apocalyptic event has ravaged the planet. The dystopian government that rules what remains of North America holds an annual series of games where young people fight to the death in order to win supplies and food for their areas? Boring. A global pandemic turns the world’s population into zombie-vampires and only Will Smith and his dog survive? No thanks.

I’ve always been more partial to novels and movies that center around the actual apocalyptic event, especially if it’s a nuclear war. How the war came about, how it was fought, and who won are more appealing facets. Unfortunately, only a select few works cover these aspects in detail and do it well. We’ve talked about Threads, a British film centered on a nuclear war, the subsequent destruction of Sheffield, and the society that emerges in Britain in the post-attack months and years.

On this side of the Atlantic, The Day After aired on ABC roughly ten months before Threads came out in the United Kingdom. The Day After centers on a fictional war and how a select group of residents in an affected community cope with the events surrounding a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in Europe that escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange. This scenario is similar to that used by its later British counterpart and attaches a believable backstory to the film. The impact of the American film was far more significant, however, reaching as far as the White House. Roughly 100 million Americans watched the first broadcast of The Day After on 20 November, 1983 making it one of the highest rated television films in history. Put simply, the film scared the shit out of the country, giving Americans a glimpse of what the future could bring. Keep in mind that tensions between the United States and Soviet Union were dangerously high at the time of its broadcast, rivaling the dark, uncertain days of October, 1962.

With all of this in mind, I believe the time is approaching for an in-depth review and analysis of The Day After. It will come about in a two or three-part series of blog posts beginning on the Monday after the Super Bowl. I realize its still a few weeks off, but I thought it would be fair to let the readers know what’s on the horizon.

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