Take Shelter

Take Shelter is a slow burning thriller of a man who has an end of the world style apocalyptic dream but can’t be sure if it’s a premonition or if he is going crazy.

Michael Shannon is Curtis, a kind, loving family man who works all day to bring home the small earnings to support his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and daughter Hannah with hearing difficulties.  They barely make ends meet but are happy.

Curtis wakes up one morning unable to breathe, raw from the incredibly vivid and lifelike dream he has just had.  He sees a storm coming that is so fierce, it could end all life.  He slowly unravels, the lines between real life and his dreams so incredibly blurred.  It spurns him into action, into soul searching, mind melding and alienating everyone around him.

I have to say I was really excited about seeing this film.  It was a rainy Sunday in Bromley, not many films to chose from and this one took my fancy.  There is nothing scarier than a person with a messed up mind, the loss of control over your own thoughts and combine that with the end of days and you have a winner.

Shannon is great in this film, really showing off his acting chops with some of the dream sequences and the waking up from them.  He brings a dark edgy side to the story.  However it’s hard to believe he is married to Chastain, an epic timeless beauty even without make up, their pairing just doesn’t work.  She is a fantastic actress though and plays the suffering wife kept in the dark very well.  The complicated plot of their daughter being partially deaf and requiring their constant attention and financial support, add strains to the relationship and creates more tension between the two of them.

It just wasn’t scary enough.  It needed more craziness, darkness, twisted madness.  It was a little too slow to get to the point and needed Curtis to get a little crazier.

I think the plot was fantastic just not executed in a way that could have made it amazing.  Instead it was good but just okay.