92% Take Shelter

All Critics (91) | Top Critics (26) | Fresh (84) | Rotten (7)

A work of hushed and persuasive emotional veracity.

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

The chilling genius of "Take Shelter'' isn't that the threat is never specified but that it doesn't need to be.

A movie for this moment in time, this moment in our lives.

The movie makes you uncomfortable, but in a good way. Nichols has turned the current moment of American unease into a powerful metaphor.

The story of a man afflicted with fearful visions, Take Shelter is a film that's hitting the right apocalyptic trumpet call at the right time.

Take Shelter is paced slowly and deliberately, which is necessary to make believable whatever is tormenting Curtis.

Those who've never understood [anxiety] could do to see Take Shelter as a total immersion virtual reality experience.

With that frowning face - including a right eye that looks sleepy and a left one that looks crazed - Michael Shannon could play Jekyll and Hyde at the same exact time.

Michael Shannon gives his best onscreen performance ever... and creates what might well be the finest male character of 2011.

While Take Shelter is a marvellously composed film, it is also one that holds you at a distance

Out of his 'Tree of Life'

It's creepy and enigmatic, but there's an odd sense of enlightenment as well, making the effort valuable, even if Nichols gets lost in his own material at times.

An engrossing, quietly unnerving film that's one of the year's best...with an astonishing performance by Michael Shannon.

It's so stunningly effective at establishing a sense of dread that it's almost impossible to recommend it without reservations.

The film has the form of a little domestic drama, but it's intense enough to, perhaps, cause you to start watching the skies yourself.

Is Curtis a prophet or is he just crazy? The script, by tyro director Jeff Nichols, does a good job keeping you guessing and still surprises you in the end.

Shannon's talent can be hard to control - it can burst the containment of his character and destabilize a movie - but in "Take Shelter" it is expertly deployed by writer-director Jeff Nichols.

Relentlessly sinister, filled with an eerily ambiguous sense of unease.

Shannon reteams with Shotgun Stories writer-director Nichols for another exploration of one man's wobbling mental state. But this time the story is much more introspective, and watching it is thoroughly unnerving.

A dread-inducing and sometimes downright creepy exercise in Hitchcockian paranoia.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/take_shelter/

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