THE PLOT THUS FAR
Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
A construction worker named Curtis is worried about the storm clouds looming over his land. He lives with his wife Samantha and their young daughter, who is deaf. Curtis starts suffering from reoccurring nightmares, where he and his daughter are being attacked. This is coupled with his increasingly irrational behavior. He insists on locking his dog outside and is intent on building an outdoor shelter for his family to protect them from when he believes the storm will arise. This is despite how tight their money has become, particularly when they are expecting to pay for their daughter’s operation. As Curtis investigates his own health and the medical history of his family, increasing pressure is placed on his relationships with his colleagues and also his wife. She continues to suffer because she cannot keep up with her increasingly distant and distracted husband.
The moment Curtis admits to himself and to others that he might be going insane, the apocalypse does arrive and so everyone else is forced to agree that something bad was on its way all along. Take Shelter is a very contemporary drama, which would not have been made, let’s say, ten years ago. The problems the film presents are mostly influenced by the recession, political divide in nowadays America and environmental problems caused by global warming. The director Jeff Nichols finds a perfect balance between building up the multitude of his main character’s anxieties and presenting Curtis’s struggle in a believable way. He escapes preaching about the presented issues and makes the sole existence of the problems uncertain up until the very last moment. What is most admirable though is that Nichols avoids religious aspects of his apocalypse and keeps it very close to life, making forces of nature the most vengeful and destructive.
The DVD comes with deleted scenes, behind the scenes featurette, Q&A with Michael Shannon and director’s commentary. The A/V Quality is strong enough for an indie drama, but there’s no substantial audio support from the back channels. The transfer tries to make the most out of the dark clouds and bloody premonitions of Curtis’s apocalyptic vision. Still, it provides for an amazing presentation for what remains one of the best underseen flicks of 2011. In the end, I’d recommend a purchase.
RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW!
