Take Shelter

Michael Shannon gives a brilliant performance in Jeff Nichols' probing examination of what occurs to a construction worker in rural Ohio when he suddenly starts experiencing ominous apparitions of natural and weather related disasters.

Curtis (Shannon) and his beautiful wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) are a typical middle class family struggling to pay the mortgage, make the car payments, host backyard garage sales and struggle to raise a pre-school age daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart), a happy child who is deaf and communicates with her parents through sign language. The couple hopes an operation made possible through his company's insurance will help Hannah to be able to hear. Problems emerge when Curtis begins having terrible premonitions accompanied by nightmares and sleepless nights. He becomes increasingly alienated and obsessed with building an underground shelter on his property.

Take Shelter is one of the best films I've seen in this genre that includes great films like Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life and Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder. Jeff Nichols' poignantly realistic script and direction are aided by outstanding performances from Michael Shannon who deserves an Academy Award nomination and Jessica Chastain who adds to her previously great 2011 work in Tree Of Life and The Debt. Good support from Shea Whigham as Shannon's friend and co-worker and Kathy Baker has a small role as Shannon's mother who may hold the key to the visions haunting him.

I can't resist seeing Take Shelter in part as a metaphor for contemporary America seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown with both conservatives and liberals engaged in crusades against their respective versions of the Boogeyman and each preparing for an imminent doomsday.