Take Shelter is a 2011 psychological thriller and an unnerving movie with an ending that is sure to shock. Directed by Jeff Nichols, this underrated psychological thriller came out in 2011 to far too little fanfare. Starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain, along with a small cast of supporting actors like Shea Whigham and Katy Mixon, Take Shelter does a lot with a little. For its efforts, Take Shelter earned a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a strong and fair score, that’s in part due to the acting, and to the thrilling and distressing plot.
It’s an incredibly strong performance from Michael Shannon, and Jessica Chastain, who continues her unexpectedly deep run into horror and thrillers. The film follows the LaForche family: father Curtis (Shannon); mother Sam (Chastain); and their young, deaf daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart). Curtis has been having dark dreams of an approaching storm, swirling flocks of birds, raining oil, and his friends and neighbors attacking him. His growing paranoia leads to him distancing himself from friends and building an underground shelter. What was once manageable becomes frightening and the LaForches threaten to spilt apart.
What Happens At The End Of Take Shelter
Curtis And His Family Come Face To Face With Curtis’ Dreams
By the end of Take Shelter, Curtis has managed to drive away the few friends he had left, and ensures that the LaForche family is treated as pariahs forever after. Through all this, Sam has stayed with Curtis. However, when he loses his job, a result of “borrowing” construction equipment to build his shelter, Curtis loses his health insurance. This is a problem in particular, because Hannah is scheduled to have cochlear implant surgery in the next few weeks. Sam is nearly at her wits’ end when a tornado warning comes across everyone’s TV.
The LaForches rush to their shelter, and it seems like Curtis has been proven right. However, he’s so wrapped up in his dreams, he remains convinced that the storm, one of cataclysmic proportions he believes, is still raging. Sam, who can hear that it has pᴀssed and people moving around, begs him to open the shelter doors. The married couple nearly reach an impᴀsse, but Curtis relents. He throws open the doors to reveal that the storm has pᴀssed. There is some damage and debris, but nothing unusual for an Ohio tornado.
Having reached a careful truce, Curtis agrees to see a psychiatrist of Sam’s choosing, and listens to the doctor’s advice about taking a family trip to Myrtle Beach. There, the trio happily spend vacation. While on the beach one day, Hannah signs the word “storm” to Curtis. Simultaneously, Sam notices thick, black rain droplets starting to form. The couple walk out onto the beach and see the mᴀssive storm from Curtis’ dream. A tsunami and water spouts grow larger in the distance. Sam whispers to a grimly knowing Curtis, “Okay”.
Curtis Turns Out To Be A Prophetic Figure
Curtis’ Dreams Come True Just As He Predicted
As it turns out, after everything, Curtis was indeed a prophet. This was never something he wanted, and Take Shelter is not a film about a man trying to get people to his side or accrue power through visions. It’s about a man forced to have visions, and with nowhere else to turn, decides the only thing he can do to save his mind and his family is listen to what his dreams are telling him. When the storm is signaled at the end of Take Shelter, everyone, including the audience, is shocked to realize that Curtis will be proven right.
Then the film takes another turn, and while it seems he may have envisioned a storm, not a difficult prediction considering he lives in the Midwest United States, it’s not the apocalyptic event of his dreams. So, when Sam begs him to open the doors, this is the true end of the film. Will Curtis finally see the world through his wife’s eyes, or will he hold onto the prophecies he’s depended on? Curtis ends up trusting his wife and opening the shelter, and it turns out she was right.
Curtis did indeed have prophetic dreams, he just had the timing wrong.
Then comes the second twist. Curtis did indeed have prophetic dreams, he just had the timing wrong. At Myrtle Beach, Sam acknowledges that he was right as the mᴀssive storm approaches. This is one of the better twists in recent movies thanks to Take Shelter‘s fake-out ending. The ending with the shelter would have been strong enough on its own, and so feels like a satisfying conclusion. That lulls the audience into a feeling of safety, so when the next twist comes, it works even better.
Curtis Does Have A Mental Health Disorder
But He’s Also An Oracle
As Curtis is falling deeper and deeper into his paranoia, he begins seeing a psychiatrist and tells her that his mother began to develop paranoid schizophrenia around the same age that Curtis is now. Curtis is fearful that his dreams are delusions and his mental health is declining. It’s never confirmed if Curtis does have a mental health disorder, but all signs suggest he does. He’s paranoid, lashes out, is biploar, and his family has a history with mental disorders.
Take Shelter is Jeff Nichols’ second film after 2007’s SH๏τgun Stories.
However, just because he has paranoid schizophrenia does not mean he’s wrong. That’s something Take Shelter ponders. Someone may be unreliable in one way, but that does not mean they’re unreliable in every way. If a man sees visions of a calamitous future, and also has schizophrenia, how can he decide which are true? Take Shelter says by trusting the ones we love, but even that answer does not ensure everyone will get out safely.
What Jeff Nichols Has Said About Take Shelter’s Ending
Nichols Has Heard A Lot Of Theories About The Ending
Take Shelter has an ambiguous ending, and director Jeff Nichols has heard a lot of variations on what it could mean, though in his mind, there are only a few ways it could go (via FilmSchoolRejects),
“There’s only a few ways to go with it, so nothing too outside of the realm of possibility. All you have is: it’s real, he’s crazy, she’s crazy, or a shared psychosis. That’s about it. There’s not too many other ways to run with it. Somebody told me it’s an allegory for Jesus, but I feel like everything is an allegory for Jesus. I don’t know. That one missed me.”
Nichols is right, there are only a few ways to read that final sH๏τ of the storm approaching, though, there are never wrong answers when it comes to film analysis. Viewers are allowed to believe what they want to believe. That’s kind of the whole deal with art. Nichols is not primarily interested in that question, anyway. Instead, he’s interested in the answer to another question,
“I wouldn’t ask you, ‘Do you think the end of the world is happening?’ What I would ask is: Do you think they’re together at the end? Do you think they’re seeing the same thing? Whether or not that’s real, I don’t care about that. That’s the fun part. The part I needed to make sure hit was when these two people look at each other is ‐ you’re right there with them. There’s a shared understanding or a reaffirmation of commitment.”
That’s the real question at the center of Take Shelter. Whether the storm is real is a fun event to debate on an internet forum, but what the movie is about is the relationship between Curtis and Sam.
The Real Meaning Of Take Shelter’s Ending
Taker Shelter Examines The Strain Of Marriage And What People Are Willing To Commit To
Take Shelter is about the relationship between Curtis and Sam, and to an extent, Hannah, though the real crux of the plot falls on the shoulders of the married couple. For everything they face, they are a remarkably strong couple. Despite Curtis’ hallucinations and paranoia, Sam stays by his side. Take Shelter asks what the audience would be willing to go through for the person they love. The LaForche’s would go through a lot. Their union fractures more and more throughout Take Shelter until the end of the film.
In the shelter, Curtis decides to trust his wife and opens the doors of the shelter. That scene signals the LaForche’s have repaired something in their relationship. It also makes the final scene all the more powerful and is why I believe the storm is real. Thanks to their repaired relationship, Sam fully trusts Curtis, as indicated by her “okay”. It’s an acknowledgment that he was right, and it’s Sam putting her trust in him, just as he did in her. What happens after the Take Shelter ending is unknown, but the LaForche’s are better equipped to handle it now.
