I saw some adverts about the BBC repeating the film on 9th October. Rags in front of him playing, and he couldn't quite remember if he had seen it or not. I was probably confusing it with another powerful made-for-TV movie about nuclear war. Other. I certainly knew it Rags However, by reputation: a grim depiction of what would happen to regular people after a nuclear conflict.
After it started, it took me only a few minutes to remember that, at some point, I had seen Rags before. I'm not sure when or how, as it has barely been screened since its initial debut in 1984. But I knew, and it was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me I had forced myself to take the film out of my pocket. memory, such is its capacity to horrify. However, I still wasn't prepared for the ways it can still be scary today, 40 years after its creation.
Can a movie cause childhood trauma?
The flashbacks began immediately, not to the war or a previous vision, but to childhood. A light blue four-door Ford Cortina, not unlike the one my father had. A handheld gaming machine that plays a game on an LCD screen, much like my once-beloved Nintendo Game and Watch. Cassette decks with wired headphones and orange foam ear pads, and supermarket products with prices ending in a halfpenny. I don't know what made me more uncomfortable, the impending nuclear attack, or how distant and strange this description of life seemed during my formative years.
The typewritten message on the screen announcing the use of nuclear weapons by the United States and Russia in the battle is cold, clinical and horrifying. Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's nuclear posture since the invasion of Ukraine is also frighteningly precise. Then more flashbacks, but this time to another, more recent situation that made the movie seem even more uncomfortably current. The panic buying after the news reminded me of those first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when I stood in long, socially distanced lines outside supermarkets, silently wondering what the future held.
Rags It's surprisingly effective at making you believe what you're seeing. Much of this comes from the use of government announcements, which are apparently genuine recordings of what we would have heard at the time if the bomb had dropped. according to director Mick Jackson. They have the serious, rigid tone associated with the BBC at the time, which as a Brit, I feel conditioned to listen to and take seriously. I had the same feeling when Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the British population to stay at home in March 2020. Rags It was working its way into my psyche in ways I hadn't expected, and technically, nothing had happened yet.
A heartbreaking experience
Then the siren sounds, which sounds to tell people that in a few moments a nuclear bomb is going to explode. If you're not absolutely petrified by what happens next and throughout the rest of the movie, then you're made of sterner stuff than I am. It's everything we fear as humans. There is chaos in the bunkers as officials try in vain to organize something, anythingin a feeble attempt to maintain order. Ordinary people, as weak as the efforts of the official, stagger out into a destroyed world, full of the dead and dying. The fires burn. Radioactive dust settles. Although it continues in some form, life as everyone knew it has effectively ended.
When a pregnant Ruth leaves her house, what she sees is so grim that putting it into words here won't do justice to its impact. When he arrives at the hospital, the situation gets even worse. I was glad to look at my laptop screen to write these words and remind myself that my reality was not what I was seeing on television. There will be those who think that I am exaggerating, that Rags It can't be that heartbreaking. There's a chance it won't be for everyone, but remember, I forced myself to forget I'd seen the movie. Not because it is forgetful or because it lacks impact, but because it is a truly agonizing ordeal.
The way horror affects you also changes with age and experience. I spent years observing all horror genres, often making it my mission to look for the nastiest examples, but over the years this enthusiasm has faded and has often been replaced by empathy. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good splatter movie today, but anything more realistic is much harder to watch. Rags it shows complete devastation on an individual level rather than a global scale, and you connect with it on an emotional and human level. You see people suffer not at the hands of a demon or a maniac but through events beyond their control. It's absolute desperation on screen that you have to endure.
Different past, same future
As the film progresses, chaos and madness descend, the country plunges into a darkness as black as the future, and it becomes clear that surviving the apocalypse does not seem like the most preferable outcome. However, it is inevitable that one becomes practically desensitized to what is happening. It is surprisingly easy to accept that eating a dead sheep or rat raw is the “new normal,” that childbirth will occur in dirty quarters, and that a terrible, imminent death awaits us in place of any hope for a new life.
Worse, Rags It not only foresees the immediate moment after the attack, but goes towards a distant future where nothing gets better or easier. the future in Rags contains only of the past, as there is no machinery, no buildings or shops, no real structure or society, and it is full of desperate people, horrendous diseases and atrocious conditions.
Seeing the life shown in Rags Before the attack must seem like a dark time to anyone who didn't exist in the 80s, as it was before the Internet, before home computers, smartphones, Instagram, Bitcoin and electric cars. But this reveals the true, terrifying power of the film. It does not matter if the world before the nuclear war in Rags does not represent the world today, because absolutely We know that the horrendous world he describes next will probably be 10 times worse. that's why Rags is, without a doubt, one of the most disturbing, disturbing and chilling horror films I have ever seen. If it's ever shown again, I'll definitely remember not to watch it.
Rags is streaming free on tubi. Watch at your own risk.
ogZ">Source link