Take Shelter

A relentlessly sinister psychological thriller, writer-director Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter stars Michael Shannon as Curtis LaForche, who initially seems like an ordinary Ohio construction worker, a loving husband to his devoted wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), and an attentive father to his hearing-impaired young daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart). But then Curtis begins to have eerie premonitions of disaster, along with persistent nightmares and hallucinations in which he's attacked by the family dog or nameless, faceless adversaries. Unable to communicate the source of his apocalyptic visions and rising dread, he wonders whether he's suffering from mental illness, especially since his mother (Kathy Baker) was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when she was his age. Determined to save his loved ones, Curtis takes out a risky bank loan to expand the subterranean storm shelter in back of his house, eventually convincing his family to move into the resultant underground bunker. Using luminous cinematography and visual effects, the film makes the weather and topography of America's heartland an integral part of this apocalyptic drama that taps into our current era's free-floating anxiety and pervasive economic insecurity. Shannon delivers an anguished, intensely realistic lead performance, nicely complemented with another memorable turn from Chastain. Recommended. (S. Granger)