Review of Take Shelter (2011) by Matt W — 08 May 2013

Michael Shannon plays an everyday husband to a wife and deaf child, and starts to experience nightmares which could be a sign of the apocalypse, or signs of his psychological demise. I really liked this movie, and Jeff Nichols has achieved something quite wonderful here, with both strong writing and direction.

The performances are what really drive the film , with Michael Shannon giving a truly great and underplayed performance, and Jessica Chastain delivering another strong and moving performance.

One of the most powerful areas of the film is that there is an ongoing sense of dread, and you are never really sure what is going to happen next, and as things slowly unravel and the dreams get more vivid and strange, you become more and more unsure. And then the ending happens. That is all I am going to say, as I found that the film as a whole was very satisfying.

My only complaint is that I found the film a little too slow, as although a slow pace doesn't bother me if it keeps the story going on, I found that at 2 hours it was starting to overstay it's welcome. There were a few scenes that I believe could have been cut out- one being with the mother, but as a whole this movie is a very interesting and utterly involving film.