Take Shelter Reviews
Financial Times
Like a laissez-passer to our apocalypse sensors.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Guardian [UK]
The film's power should reside in this agonised human dilemma, but in the end it becomes a rather self-important shaggy dog story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Fear is the American vice ... Take Shelter latches on to something deep and true within many of us.
Full Review
| Original Score: 92/100
This is London
As in Todd Haynes's 1995 masterpiece, Safe, we are in a world that can't be pinned down.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Daily Mirror [UK]
The performances and themes of this psychological drama are all in five-star territory, it's just a shame all the good work is let down by a seriously drawn-out plot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
rec.arts.movies.reviews
A kind of inverted version of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with an end of the world obsession by a Joe Lunchpail type guy rather than UFO's. My pick for best movie of 2011.
Little White Lies
The supernatural horror/suburban drama mash-up doesn't always sit well, but there's no need to take shelter from the Shannon/Nichols partnership.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Film4
An intense drama of mental meltdown and domestic apocalypse for an age of anxiety.
Real.com
A sensitively constructed, if somewhat protracted metaphor for mental health and its frightening onset that remains with you long after viewing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Capital Times (Madison, WI)
It's also very moving, showing how paranoia pulls the man away from the people he loves and the people he thinks he needs to protect.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Film4
An intense drama of mental meltdown and domestic apocalypse for an age of anxiety.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Birmingham Post
Could also have lost half an hour yet still maintained the momentum towards a powerful climax...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Sky Movies
It's the collision of Shannon's reality and dementia that's the driving force propelling a drama that is dark with foreboding.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Top CriticWhen future film historians look back at the cultural fallout from America's financial collapse, 'Take Shelter' will be a key text. That is, if the storm doesn't sweep us all away.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Q Network Film Desk
Michael Shannon gives the performance of the year
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Empire Magazine
Terrific. Michael Shannon delivers a fractured everyman who'll stay with you long after the final frame.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
A movie born from the atmospheric pressure of the national mood, from the sense that danger is lurking around every corner. The star is Michael Shannon, the human storm front -- he's a brooding, intense presence that occasionally thunders and explodes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Tampa Bay Times
This is the movie M. Night Shyamalan wishes he could make, a thriller set in the twilight zone of a disturbed mind. Quite simply, it is one of 2011's best.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
The Scorecard Review
Even though the film unravels, the performances by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain make this film worth it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
PopMatters
...an exercise in extended dread.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
