Take Shelter
“The storm may be coming. The terrifying question is whether anyone else can see it.”
Director
Jeff Nichols
Release
25 November 2011
Runtime
121 Minutes
Certificate
15
Synopsis
Curtis LaForche has a wife he loves, a young daughter and a steady job. Life isn't easy, particularly as Curtis and Samantha deal with the financial pressures surrounding Hannah's healthcare and special-needs education, but their family is happy. Then Curtis starts dreaming. In his visions, an enormous storm approaches. The rain behaves strangely. Animals become threatening. Even people Curtis knows turn against him. The dreams become so intense that their effects continue after he wakes. Curtis begins wondering whether they might be warnings. He keeps much of what is happening from Samantha and instead channels his fear into an old storm shelter in their backyard. What begins as preparation becomes obsession. Curtis borrows equipment from work, spends money the family needs elsewhere and increasingly isolates himself from those around him. Yet another possibility terrifies him just as much as the storm. Mental illness exists in Curtis's family. He begins seeking help while simultaneously continuing preparations for a disaster he can't prove is coming. Eventually he has to tell Samantha the truth. And together they must confront the question Curtis has been desperately trying to answer. Is something terrible approaching their family — or is the danger coming from inside Curtis himself?
The Movie Trailer
Take Shelter is a haunting psychological thriller about a husband and father who begins experiencing terrifying visions of an approaching storm — and becomes increasingly unsure whether he's predicting a catastrophe or losing his grip on reality.
Curtis LaForche lives a modest life in Ohio with his wife Samantha and their young daughter Hannah.
Then the dreams begin.
Violent storms. Strange rain. People he trusts becoming dangerous.
The visions feel frighteningly real.
Rather than tell Samantha everything, Curtis becomes obsessed with restoring and expanding the storm shelter behind their home.
The project consumes money his family can barely afford and begins damaging his relationships with friends, colleagues and eventually Samantha herself.
But Curtis faces an impossible question.
If the visions aren't real, he may be destroying his family trying to protect them.
If they are real, the shelter may be the only thing that can save them. Sony's official synopsis confirms that the central conflict is between Curtis's visions, his obsessive shelter construction and the strain it places upon his family.
THE STORM
Curtis Can See Something Nobody Else Can
The storms in Take Shelter are frightening because Curtis experiences them with absolute conviction.
These aren't vague nightmares forgotten moments after waking.
They feel like warnings.
The skies change. The rain becomes unnatural. Familiar people suddenly become dangerous.
Each new vision gives Curtis another reason to believe something catastrophic is approaching.
Yet nobody else can see it.
That leaves Curtis trapped between two terrifying possibilities.
Either his mind is creating an apocalypse that doesn't exist, or he's the only person who knows that a real one is coming.
THE SHELTER
Protecting His Family Could Destroy It
Curtis responds to uncertainty by doing the one thing he understands.
He prepares.
The storm shelter becomes something tangible he can control when everything happening inside his head feels impossible to understand.
But protecting his family isn't free.
Money disappears into the project.
His behaviour creates problems at work.
Friends begin questioning him.
And Samantha increasingly struggles to understand why her husband is risking the life they've built together.
The cruel irony is that Curtis's determination to save his family from an imagined future catastrophe may destroy that family in the present.
CURTIS & SAMANTHA
At the Centre of the Storm Is a Marriage
For all its apocalyptic imagery, Take Shelter ultimately depends upon something much smaller.
Trust.
Curtis doesn't simply need Samantha to believe that a storm is coming.
He needs to trust her enough to admit that he doesn't know whether it is.
Jessica Chastain's Samantha therefore becomes crucial to the story.
She isn't merely watching her husband unravel from the sidelines. She's trying to understand what he's experiencing while protecting their daughter, their finances and the life they've created together.
When Curtis finally allows Samantha completely inside his fear, the question changes.
It isn't simply whether Curtis believes himself anymore.
It's whether the two of them can face whatever comes next together.