Review #401: 'Take Shelter' (2011)

Curtis (Michael Shannon) is suffering from apocalyptic nightmares that foresees a huge storm encroaching the area. He also dreams of his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and his dead daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart) trying to harm him, along with his best friend and work colleague Dewart (Shea Whigham). Fearing his visions are true, Curtis starts to build a huge underground shelter in his yard, taking out a massive loan he can't afford and borrowing work equipment from his job. Knowing that his mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, Curtis and the dedicated Samantha worry that he is in fact losing his mind, as his behaviour becomes more unpredictable and erratic.

Working on two levels, Take Shelter works both as a character drama that creates a realistic and slightly disturbing portrayal of mental disease, and as an apocalyptic thriller. America is known as one of the most paranoid and high-anxiety countries in the world, with areas of near-fanatical religious and political beliefs, high gun crime, the threat of terrorism, and most recently, financial gloom with the recession. Curtis seems to embody these fears. His nightmares don't reveal too much about what he thinks may happen - there's a storm, murderous attacks by his loved ones, a petrol-like substance falling from the sky - so he is essentially terrified of the unknown. Like Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011), the film is very much the thinking-man's vision of the apocalypse, and rather than action scenes and cities being destroyed in CGI, it is the psychological meltdown of its protagonist that it is more interested in.

If he were younger and better-looking, Michael Shannon would have been a superstar years ago. Instead, he is seen all too little on the big screen, and is currently stealing HBO's Boardwalk Empire as religious fanatic FBI agent Val Alden. Here, he even betters his Oscar-nominated 5-minute cameo in the criminally underrated Revolutionary Road (2008), giving a towering performance as a man slowly tearing himself apart. Chastain and Whigham (also star of Boardwalk Empire) offer admirable support as the supportive wife and best friend respectively. Although the climax is somewhat predictable, it has power nonetheless, thanks to Jeff Nichols' unfussy direction and the fact that the journey there is so riveting. One of the most overlooked films of 2011.


Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie