Take Shelter Reviews

Director Nichols walks a tightrope between giving us a dark, Gothic tale of misunderstood prophecy and a sobering lesson on the state of mental health care in rural America.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

While Take Shelter isn't by any means perfect - writer/director Jeff Nichols could use a refresher course on editing - it's a powerful film, displaying a devolvement into insanity that ultimately proves to be quite visionary.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

I could watch Michael Shannon stare at a wall for 90 minutes and still be captivated.

Full Review | Original Score: A+

Take Shelter writer-director Jeff Nichols takes great care in detailing Curtis's journey and surrounding him with concerned loved ones.

Full Review | Original Score: A

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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

Full Review | Original Score: A-

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

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

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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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

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Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

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

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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.

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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.

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5