AssInAss (Level 14)

What makes TAKE SHELTER the best psychological thriller I've ever seen is because how unpredictable it is by flipping all the genre cliches over. It's not reliant on just one character's lonely descent into madness. It flips on the idea that we should relate to the crazed protagonist as the hero. This film is not as one-sided as other thrillers or this ilk tend to be. It doesn't have a cop-out ambiguous ending either which is the case with similar films where the director isn't confident and thinks making it one way or the other is the only to get a thought-provoking "word of mouth" film. Kind of my reason for why I don't like David Lynch's films.

It's a human family drama primarily, which is rare for a thriller. Most directors would be scared of putting such an angle that could ruin the tension. Not only that, it's also the most sincere depiction of paranoid schizophrenia on film and should be seen by any Psychology student. It's a deep look at the reality of such a mental condition and how difficult it is for other people to deal with such an affected person.

Quite a lot of psycho thrillers have dream and reality segments, but usually they're easily divorced by the viewer. In Take Shelter because it all plays out in the real world, every scene of the film has this unease and uncertainty for the viewer until the very last second of that segment. The last 20-minute climax is the most gripping in the past decade.

The best part is it stays a human drama, the madness doesn't take over to drown everything else unlike other psych thrillers. You'll be remembering more character conflicts, and relationship struggles than cool sequences, but they're both done extremely well. There is even more tension between the family than with the dreams vs reality angle.

Quite easily my favourite film of 2011. Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Nichols, Adam Stone's cinematography, and David Wingo's chilling score all working in unison.