Take Shelter (2011)

☆ ☆ ☆

Take Shelter (2011) – J. Nichols

A movie as full of pregnant moments as any I have seen.  Curtis (Michael Shannon) begins to have ominous visions of an impending storm which leads him to get a loan to expand the family’s underground storm shelter, complete with gas masks).  But all is not as it seems, Curtis’ mother has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (years earlier) and Michael fears that the same terror is descending upon him.  Shannon and Jessica Chastain as his wife demonstrate their strong acting chops as calamity sets in; coping with mental illness isn’t easy and even more so when you have a deaf child (played by Tova Stewart who is actually deaf).  But everything is portentous, looming in the future, and the movie takes its time showing Curtis unravelling in the small Ohio town where they live (destroying the important relationships they have with others).  The trick that director Jeff Nichols is trying to pull off is to treat this heavy material as a thriller – with its foreboding tone – and it works all the way up until it doesn’t. I mean WTF was that ending?  The screenplay invalidates itself in the final moments, undercutting the experiences of everyone onscreen, and concluding with no denouement.  I guess we still witnessed great acting tackling a real social problem but alas.