TAKE SHELTER

Michael Shannon stars as Curtis, a lovable muttering bastard whose got it all: a deaf daughter, a seamstress wife, a loyal dog, a good job, close friends, and a nice house.  But there's a problem.  There had better be, or there's not really a movie.  Shannon has recurring nightmares of an impending toxic tornado apocalypse and wants to makes preparations for his family's safety.  But he also remembers that his mother lost her marbles at about his age, and had to be committed to a mental asylum.  So Shannon tries to hedge his bets, semi-secretly enlarging and upgrading his backyard tornado shelter under the guise of ordinary tornado preparedness whilst trying to appear as non-crazy as possible to the increasingly critical eyes of his family, friends and co-workers.

Shannon is a magnificent performer.  He seems like he never quite belongs, and it's fascinating to watch him do anything.  His twitches and grumbles go a lot further than pure hysterics, although an ugly confrontation with a former friend is an amazing fireworks display.  He is the perfect lead for a film about quiet, dark legacies.  Just as the audience can't take their eyes off Shannon, neither can the other characters of the film; they always look to him for a response when he is staring off blankly in his own little world.

Shea Whigham plays Shannon's best friend and co-worker who helps him, up to a point, with his bizarre little quest to expand his modest tornado shelter into a small bunker with enough food, oxygen and supplies to weather a seven day super storm.  It's a nice touch, an unexpected and realistic one, that Whigham only really becomes upset when Shannon cuts him out of his life and won't talk to him anymore.  The dreadful feeling of a long friendship crumbling is made painstakingly real in his squinty, angry face.

Most of the movie is setup, which is both good and bad.  All the actors have a little more room to breathe with such an un-hurried pace.  But since we know we're watching essentially a countdown to a reckoning, some of the pitfalls along the way seem inconsequential because we know something so much more important is just down the road.  As soon as an insurance company representative tells Chastain that she's lucky that her husband has such comprehensive health insurance to cover their adorable deaf daughters cochlear implants, you'll see the inevitable tragedy coming a mile away.

The dream sequences are a mixed bag.  The first one ends without a jump-cut (or even a clear shift back to reality) but every dream after that seems to end with a jarring cut, a sudden loud noise, and close ups of panicked sweaty breathing.  Tellingly, it's his daughter, that he could have potentially passed on his mental illness to, that appears in most of his dreams and not his wife.  Whether it's a tornado, or the peculiar toxic aftermath that includes animals and people going murderously berserk, Shannon fears he won't be able to protect his family and that's the scariest part.  The end-of-a-dream-sequence-fake-scare feels like it belongs in a different, lesser film, but the film ultimately cultivates a mood of dreadful uncertainty. that lingers on after the credits roll.

You have seen her somewhere/everywhere

~ Jessica Chastain's busy year:  she appeared in The Tree Of Life and The Debt and The Help and this movie.

~ Cable TV superstars assemble!  Michael Shannon co-stars on Boardwalk Empire as Prohibition Agent Nelson van Alden which also features Shea Whigham in a supporting role as Sheriff Eli Thompson, whilst Ray McKinnon, formerly the afflicted Rev. Smith on Deadwood and currently the reckless federal prosecutor Linc Potter on Sons Of Anarchy, has a single, effective scene as Shannon's older brother who offers him love, understanding, and an ass-kicking and in turn receives a hug and a dog.

~ Lisa Gay Hamilton is in this but I didn't recognize her.

~ I just realized Ray McKinnon played Vernon T. Waldrip in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and my head exploded.

~ Kathy Baker appears in a single scene as Shannon's mother where, although she is still in some sort of facility, she appears to have significantly recovered from her worst period of mental illness.  But the mood shifts when Shannon starts talking about his own problems with reality.

~ Excuse me, I meant to say, Academy Award Winner Ray McKinnon.

~ I'm not sure how I feeling about the ending, which I will not spoil.