What to Stream: Prepping for the Apocalypse in 'Take Shelter'
Take Shelter (2011) Amazon Instant, iTunes
The Basics: An unsettling psychological end-of-days thriller starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain
If You Liked: Donnie Darko, Melancholia, and Contagion
The Nugget: A devoted family man is haunted by apocalyptic dreams.
Most movies play out the apocalypse on a huge, metropolitan scale, with monster waves and mass hysteria. In Take Shelter — from promising writer-director Jeff Nichols (Mud) — the opposite is true: What’s so terrifying is watching it unfold slowly and ambiguously around one man; or is it just in his head? Curtis LaForche (played by an unforgettable Michael Shannon) is a devoted husband and caring father in rural Ohio. Life is complicated, but fundamentally good, until Curtis starts to have bad dreams: weird storms darken the horizon, a toxic rain falls, strangers encroach zombie-like on the yard. He converts the family storm shelter into an end-times bunker, upsetting his wife (Jessica Chastain) and alienating his friends — all the while acutely aware that he may be losing his mind. Steeped in the kind of cut-off, small-town vibe that gives TV’s The Walking Dead so much of its ambient terror, Take Shelter leads you to a place that’s both completely surprising and full of familiar dread.
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics/Everett Collection
