''Take Shelter'' is a 2011 American
psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting.
In terms of context and co ...
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
, written and directed by
Jeff Nichols and starring
Michael Shannon
Michael Corbett Shannon (born August 7, 1974) is an American actor, producer, musician, and theater director. He is an off beat actor known for his on-screen versatility, performing in both comedies and dramas. He became known for his frequent ...
and
Jessica Chastain. The plot follows a young husband and father (Shannon) who is plagued by a series of
apocalyptic visions, and questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself and his increasing worries over having
paranoid schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. ...
.
The film won two
Saturn Award
The Saturn Awards are American awards presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. The awards were created to honor science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, but have since grown to reward other films be ...
s,
Best Writing for Nichols and
Best Actor for Shannon, and was nominated for two more,
Best Horror or Thriller Film and
Best Actress
Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress aw ...
for Chastain. It explores the themes of
masculinity
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors con ...
,
mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
, and the lengths people go to protect the ones they love.
Plot
In
LaGrange, Ohio, Curtis LaForche has apocalyptic dreams and visual and auditory hallucinations of rain "like fresh motor oil", swarms of menacing black birds, and being harmed by people close to him. He hides all of this from his wife, Samantha, and their deaf daughter, Hannah. He instead channels his anxieties into a compulsive obsession to improve and enlarge a storm shelter in his backyard; however, his increasingly strange behavior – including a tendency to cut ties with anyone in his life that has harmed him only in his dreams – strains his relationship with his family, friends, employer, and the close-knit town. He also puts his construction job in jeopardy as he borrows equipment from the company to build his shelter.
To deal with his increased
insomnia
Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which people have trouble sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy, ...
and apocalyptic visions, Curtis grudgingly sees a counselor at a free clinic, with whom he talks about his family's psychological history. His mother, Sarah, has
paranoid schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. ...
that surfaced in her at about the same age that Curtis is now. He's worried that he may also have the disorder.
In order to get the expanded storm shelter done, Curtis gets a home improvement loan he can't afford to start building the shelter – all without telling his wife. Samantha becomes angry when she discovers the project. After Curtis takes more than the prescribed dose of a sedative and has a seizure, Samantha calls an ambulance. He recovers, then finally explains the truth to her, including his dreams.
Curtis begins to miss more work, causing tensions with his boss, as he and Samantha make preparations for the
cochlear implant
A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech und ...
surgery Hannah is to undergo in six weeks' time. Having been informed of the borrowed work equipment, Curtis's boss fires him and gives him only two weeks' worth of medical insurance benefits, after placing Dewart, the close friend and co-worker whom Curtis asked to help him start construction of the shelter, on two weeks' unpaid administrative leave.
Curtis buys gas masks for his family and extends his previous employer's health insurance policy for a few extra weeks. After he finds out that his counselor at the free clinic has suddenly transferred and been replaced with a new one, he walks out. Tensions linger between Curtis and Sam over his loss of a job/income at such a crucial time for their family. Samantha gets Curtis to see an actual psychiatrist and demands that they attend a social function so she can restore some sense of normalcy to their strained, increasingly isolated life. At a Lions Club community gathering, a bitter Dewart, who has been spreading gossip that Curtis is crazy, is angrily provoked and punches him. Enraged, Curtis knocks Dewart to the floor, overturns a table and unleashes a frightening verbal tirade upon everyone present. He prophetically shouts that a devastating storm is coming, insisting that none of them are prepared.
Later, a tornado warning sends him and his family into the shelter. After they awaken, Curtis reluctantly removes his gas mask, prompted by Samantha. They go to open the shelter doors, but he still hears a storm outside. His wife implores him, insisting that there's no storm and that he needs to open the door. After a tense standoff, Curtis throws open the doors into the blinding sun; a strong-but-bearable storm has passed, and neighbors are cleaning up broken tree limbs and other yard debris as power company trucks restore electricity along the street.
A psychiatrist advises the couple to go through with their planned, annual beach vacation, but that Curtis will need to get psychiatric care in a facility away from his family upon their return. At
Myrtle Beach
Myrtle Beach is a resort city on the east coast of the United States in Horry County, South Carolina. It is located in the center of a long and continuous stretch of beach known as "The Grand Strand" in the northeastern part of the state. Its ...
, while Curtis is building sand castles with Hannah, she signs the word "storm". As Samantha exits their beachhouse, the thick, oily rain that Curtis spoke of begins to fall, staining her outstretched hand. Samantha looks up to a bigger version of the ominous storm clouds Curtis had seen, massing over the ocean; tornado-like waterspouts reach down to the ocean's surface, and the tide pulls back as a
tsunami
A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...
looms in the distance. Samantha and Curtis exchange glances, as Samantha assuringly whispers "ok." The scene cuts to black, leaving the truth of the reality a mystery.
Cast
Release
''Take Shelter''
premiered
A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition.
A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its first ...
in January 2011 at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
, and
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produc ...
acquired rights to distribute the film in North America,
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
, Australia, and New Zealand. The film also screened in May 2011 at the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
, where it won the 50th Critics' Week Grand Prix. It also received the Fipresci award from the
International Federation of Film Critics, sharing it with ''
Le Havre
Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very cl ...
'' and ''
The Minister
''The Minister'' (french: L'Exercice de l'État) is a 2011 French-Belgian political drama film directed by Pierre Schöller.
Plot
French Transport Minister Bertrand Saint-Jean arrives at the scene of a serious bus crash with many fatalities. ...
''. In September 2011, ''Take Shelter'' was shown at the 37th
Deauville American Film Festival
The Deauville American Film Festival (french: Festival du cinéma américain de Deauville, link=no) is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, which has taken place since 1975 in Deauville, France.
It was established by Lionel Cho ...
, where it beat 13 other contenders to win the festival's grand prize. Later in September, ''Take Shelter'' was shown at the 2011
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...
and at the 7th Zurich Film Festival, where it was awarded as the best International Feature Film.
The film had a
limited release
__FORCETOC__
Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...
in New York and Los Angeles on , 2011.
Reception
Critical response
''Take Shelter'' received critical acclaim. It has a rating of 92% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 168 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. The consensus states "Michael Shannon gives a powerhouse performance and the purposefully subtle filmmaking creates a perfect blend of drama, terror, and dread." The film also has a score of 85 out of 100 on
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, based on 34 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' gave the film four out of four stars and praised Shannon's performance, writing, "It is the gift of actor Michael Shannon as Curtis LaForche that while appearing to be a stable husband and father with a good job in construction, he also can evoke by his eyes and manner a deep unease." He also wrote, "Here is a frightening thriller based not on special effects gimmicks but on a dread that seems quietly spreading in the land: that the good days are ending, and climate changes or other sinister forces will sweep away our safety."
Ending
Since the release of ''Take Shelter'', viewers have discussed the meaning of the film's ambiguous ending. In an interview with ''Creative Screenwriting'' five years after the release of the film, Nichols reflected, "I had a very strict idea of what the end of ''Take Shelter'' was. I know exactly what happens, and it’s fascinating to see people respond to it in their own ways. The beautiful part of storytelling is that you’re not just telling people a story, they’re also telling you something about themselves too through their reactions. In that situation you’re in a conversation with your audience. I really can’t think of a more rewarding or fulfilling result for something you’ve written. It’s active, kinetic, and really humbling."
In a video interview with Chase Whale in September 2012, Nichols elaborated on the ending, saying "For me personally...the moment that matters, dream, not dream, real, not real, whatever it is...is these two characters looking at each other and connecting. The fact that they're both seeing it, that's what matters, because if this is a film that is a meditation on marriage and commitment and communication then what the ending has to be is that these people are on the same page again. They had this wedge put in between them from all of these various factors, and now at the end they're looking at each other, and they are seeing each other, and they're together, and the circumstances that surround that, please, open to interpretation."
See also
*
List of films featuring the deaf and hard of hearing
There is a body of films that feature the deaf and hard of hearing. The ''Encyclopedia of Film Themes, Settings and Series'' wrote, "The world of the deaf has received little attention in film. Like blindness... it has been misused as a plot gimmi ...
References
External links
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{{Jeff Nichols
2011 films
2011 drama films
2011 independent films
2010s psychological drama films
American drama films
American independent films
Apocalyptic films
2010s English-language films
Films about psychiatry
Films directed by Jeff Nichols
Films set in Ohio
Films shot in Ohio
Sony Pictures Classics films
2010s American films
Films set in bunkers