Movie Review - Take Shelter

Take Shelter (2011)

Starring Michel Shannon and Jessica Chastain

Directed by Jeff Nichols

I appreciate a slow-moving drama every now and then.  One that takes its time to depict its characters and slowly roll out its key plot points.  That said, moreso than other flicks, I've got to be in the mood to watch a movie that is methodically paced.  Last year's Meek's Cutoff comes to mind as a movie that fits this description -- the pace was slow as could be and I venture to guess that had I watched it on another day, I may have despised the film.  Take Shelter falls into the same category of slow-paced, character-driven dramas and, admittedly, I stopped watching after twenty-five minutes because I wasn't connecting with the piece at all.  However, once I resumed the film two days later, I found myself intrigued by the interesting character study on display...but still fully cognizant of the fact that this two hour movie was stretched a bit too thin for its story.

Michael Shannon plays Curtis LaForche, a loving husband and father, who is holding down a decent construction job that will provide the health insurance needed to have an operation to help his hard-of-hearing young daughter.  However, seemingly out of the blue, Curtis begins having horrific nightmares that begin affecting his ability to function while he's awake.  He begins to have premonitions of a storm of near-biblical proportions and sets out to build a storm shelter to keep his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and daughter safe.  Soon, Curtis finds himself living in a constant paranoid state which makes him anxiously nervous considering the fact that his mother was diagnosed as a schizophrenic at the same age as Curtis is now.

Rather effectively, Take Shelter is both a character piece and a horror film.  In terms of the former, we follow Curtis (Michael Shannon is in every scene) and watch his slow, rather devastating, slippage into possible mental illness.  In terms of the latter, this is a "horror" film only in that there is a palpable amount of tension built by director and screenwriter Jeff Nichols, forcing the audience to question whether Curtis is in fact going insane and, if he indeed is, what type of damage he will cause to those he loves.  By showing us Curtis's dreams and then the aftereffects, Mr. Nichols creates an ominous tone that permeates the entire film and, as the film neared its conclusion, I was legitimately on the edge of my seat wondering which way the flick was going to turn.

Michael Shannon is fantastic and, although I don't know how my Best Actor nominations will turn out when I tackle them in the annual RyMickey Awards in May as that seems to be a strong category for me this year, he was robbed of the buzz that he rightly deserved in the months leading up to the Oscars.  I'm surprised more critic organizations didn't extol his forceful and intense performance.  Once his nightmares begin to rear their ugly heads, he became a scary guy that seemingly could come unhinged at the drop of a hat.  Additionally, Jessica Chastain has more than proven herself in 2011 and is very nice and understated here.  Although her role certainly isn't given as much depth or screen time as Shannon's, she still manages to be quietly powerful in the film's final scenes which proves that she made an impact on me as the movie progressed despite playing things subdued and under the radar.

Take Shelter is a nice film -- given an R rating only for one scene of language -- that if only it had been trimmed down a tad would've been a great film.  Still, it's one worth renting as a good psychological tension-filled drama with a great performance from Michael Shannon.

The RyMickey Rating:  B