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Take Shelter (2011)

tomatometer

92

Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 145
Fresh: 134 | Rotten: 11

Michael Shannon gives a powerhouse performance and the purposefully subtle filmmaking creates a perfect blend of drama, terror, and dread.

93

Average Rating: 8.7/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 2

Michael Shannon gives a powerhouse performance and the purposefully subtle filmmaking creates a perfect blend of drama, terror, and dread.

audience

83

liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 10,075

My Rating

Movie Info

Curtis LaForche lives in a small Ohio town with his wife Samantha and six-year-old daughter Hannah, who is deaf. Money is tight, and navigating Hannah's healthcare and special needs education is a constant struggle. Despite that, Curtis and Samantha are very much in love and their family is a happy one. Then Curtis begins having terrifying dreams about an encroaching, apocalyptic storm. He chooses to keep the disturbance to himself, channeling his anxiety into the obsessive building of a storm

R, 2 hr.

Mystery & Suspense, Drama

Jeff Nichols

Feb 14, 2012

$1.7M

Sony Pictures Classics

Cast

All Critics (145) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (135) | Rotten (11) | DVD (4)

A hallucinatory thriller anchored by a deeply resonant sense of unease.

January 4, 2012 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Shannon wonderfully modulates Nichols' portrait of a man whose mind and life seem to unravel before our eyes.

October 30, 2011 Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | Comment
Orlando Sentinel
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There's a strong, unsettling sense of disease that runs through Take Shelter, the best drama of the year so far.

October 28, 2011 Full Review Source: Detroit News | Comment (1)
Detroit News
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Shannon is astounding, playing a good man pushed to the brink of sanity, maybe beyond. He portrays a sense of quiet desperation -- a feeling recognizable to many.

October 27, 2011 Full Review Source: Arizona Republic | Comment
Arizona Republic
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A work of hushed and persuasive emotional veracity.

October 21, 2011 Full Review Source: Denver Post | Comment
Denver Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The movies have long been mad about the onset of madness.

October 21, 2011 Full Review Source: Dallas Morning News | Comment
Dallas Morning News
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Sony Pictures Classics releases one of the best films of 2011, Jeff Nichols's haunting Take Shelter, in a fantastic Blu-ray transfer, rounded out with some satisfying special features.

February 14, 2012 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

The riveting performances turn what on paper is a fairly simple climax into quite the emotional wallop.

February 3, 2012 Full Review Source: TheMovieReport.com | Comment
TheMovieReport.com

Quietly spellbinding until the film's astonishing final 20 minutes which make it one of the year's best.

January 9, 2012 Full Review Source: Spectrum (St. George, Utah) | Comment
Spectrum (St. George, Utah)

The role of Curtis in this film is a perfect fit for Shannon's intense and slightly unhinged screen persona.

January 4, 2012 Full Review Source: Ebert Presents At The Movies | Comment

As a director, Nichols creates such an intense aura of dread and impending apocalypse during the visions that when Curtis simply describes one that is not shown in the film, we shudder at the mental image it paints.

January 4, 2012 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide | Comment
TV Guide's Movie Guide

eksetazei to thema toy me to sebasmo, thn aisiodoksia, alla kai thn apeiria toy dhmioyrgika kai koinwnika anerxomenoy, oi rizes toy sth bathia Amerikh de toy epitrepoyne kan mia "atheh" proseggish

December 26, 2011 Full Review Source: Movies for the Masses | Comment
Movies for the Masses

A film that's easier to admire (at least in part) than actually like, but it's also a difficult film to ignore.

December 22, 2011 Full Review Source: Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) | Comment
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

The dread in this slow simmer of a film comes not from a clearly definable sense of danger, but more from a sense of simply not knowing.

December 9, 2011 Full Review Source: Fresno Bee | Comment
Fresno Bee

A richly drawn, and at times disturbing, portrait of one man's descent into madness.

December 9, 2011 Full Review Source: Times-Picayune | Comments (3)
Times-Picayune

Michael Shannon is at his best as a man plagued by apocalyptic dreams that start to bleed into his everyday life. It's one of the best independent American films of the last decade, playing on current concerns about the future of the planet.

December 4, 2011 Full Review Source: Screenwize | Comment
Screenwize

There's something about Michael Shannon's looming height and malleable features that makes him a natural fit for playing tortured souls.

November 30, 2011 Full Review Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune | Comment

Nichols has nothing positive to say, and spends more than two hours saying it. It's a superficial movie pretending to be deep.

November 27, 2011 Full Review Source: Daily Mail [UK] | Comments (7)
Daily Mail [UK]

Parlays contemporary fears into the kind of relatable apocalyptic drama that relies less on big special effects and more on the ambiguous mental state of its protagonist.

November 27, 2011 Full Review Source: Scotsman | Comment

An intriguing, painful film about the angst that's currently in the air, about misreading the runes, about embarking on actions that might make us laughing stocks, about taking wagers with and against history.

November 27, 2011 Full Review Source: Observer [UK] | Comment
Observer [UK]

A film for troubled times, Take Shelter taps into current anxieties about economic meltdown and climate change disaster with its scarily apt depiction of a man driven to the edge by apocalyptic fears.

November 25, 2011 Full Review Source: Movie Talk | Comment

An impressively sustained slow-burn parable from writer-director Jeff Nichols, shot with ominous beauty, guarding its mysteries with care.

November 25, 2011 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | Comment
Daily Telegraph

Like a laissez-passer to our apocalypse sensors.

November 25, 2011 Full Review Source: Financial Times | Comment
Financial Times

The film's power should reside in this agonised human dilemma, but in the end it becomes a rather self-important shaggy dog story.

November 25, 2011 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comments (3)
Guardian [UK]

Fear is the American vice ... Take Shelter latches on to something deep and true within many of us.

November 25, 2011 Full Review Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Comment
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Take Shelter

Michael Shannon has surprisingly been around the acting game since the early 90's. He even made a brief appearance in the Bill Murray comedy "Groundhog Day" in 1993 but it wasn't until his scene-stealing Oscar nominated turn in the Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet film "Revolutionary Road" in 2008, that people took

February 21, 2012
MrMarakai

Super Reviewer

A powerful, controlled chaotic near-masterpiece concerning a well-respected family man (Michael Shannon) who begins to experience hallucinations and visions that "a storm" is coming, and because of this he feels empowered to build a storm shelter in his backyard to prepare for the impending apocalyptic disaster.

February 14, 2012
Dan Schultz

Super Reviewer

    1. Curtis: Is anyone else seeing this?
    – Submitted by 3guys 1 (3 days ago)
    1. Curtis LaForche: [prophetic] There's a storm comin'!
    – Submitted by Tom W (2 months ago)
    1. Curtis LaForche: [ranting angrily at a roomful of neighbors] Sleep well in your beds. 'Cause if this thing comes true, there ain't gonna be any more.
    – Submitted by Kameron M (3 months ago)
    1. Samantha: Tell me something... that helps me understand why your being like this.
    2. Curtis LaForche: There's nothing to explain.
    – Submitted by Chris P (4 months ago)
    1. Samantha: You want to waste money on a stupid tornado shelter?
    – Submitted by Chris P (4 months ago)

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