Starring a cast of unknown actors

Written & Directed by Terry Winnan

Streaming on Amazon now

After an emergency alert is sent to the phones of British citizens, three short films portray different characters with varying levels of preparedness for a nuclear attack.

There are times when the normal rules of engagement just don’t apply. One of those times would likely be in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear strike. Another would be when reviewing a cinematic oddity that has popped up on Amazon Prime Video telling that very story.

I was most definitely unsettled by Terry Winnan’s The Days Ahead – not because of its specific narrative, but because it was there in the first place. I had just had the willies scared out of me by Kathryn Bigelow’s slick, convincing, A-list nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite so to find a drama about surviving a nuclear attack on a major streamer just hours later made me wonder if there was something going on I ought to know about.

I was also unsettled because The Days Ahead isn’t any old nuclear drama, it’s a distinctly hokey nuclear drama. The script is hokey. The acting is hokey plus. It’s so low budget it looks as if it was funded, not through nefarious deals with Hollywood moguls in movie festival hotel rooms, but by finding a couple of books of Green Shield Stamps (ask an old person) down the back of your nan’s sofa. It has the patina of an earnest student film made by a collective of extremely worried sixth formers.

And yet…

…here it is on Prime Video. If this isn’t a statement on the zeitgeist, then I really don’t know what would be. There’s no doubting the commitment and sincerity of Mr Winnan’s enterprise – not to mention the ingenuity of his micro-budget achievement – but 45 years in the entertainment industry tells me that there is no way a film with production values this low would have made it onto a major streamer had those in charge not felt there was an audience for just about anything expressing a genuine fear for the future of ‘peace in our time’.

Verdict: The Days Ahead is cheap and not at all cheerful. Kudos to Winnan for making it happen, and getting it out there. For all its many flaws, it’s oddly worth 75 minutes of your time, especially if you’re looking for ‘prepper’ hints on how to survive the seemingly inevitable firestorm. 4/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com