PORPENTINE

Take Shelter is fucking powerful and intense. Doubt and dread in equal measure.

The film makes us feel the weight of everything hanging over the character’s heads until we fear it as much as they fear it. We understand what everything means to them.

Take Shelter has a Biblical feel, but avoids the anti-feminism and uncomfortable depiction of women that it could so easily have fallen into.

This is a film dealing with the question of insanity. But we don’t know which reality to turn to because we’re so far inside the head of the main character (Michael Shannon) that we have as much idea as he does. His portrayal carries the movie–subdued, cringing torment, beautiful to watch.

Often a horror film pairs lack of characterization with stupidity. Two-dimensional characters doing dumb, selfish things that get them killed. A Lonely Place To Die is a film with briefly sketched characters who matter because of the things they do, not less. We don’t know anything about the people beyond that they are mountain climbers hiking the desolate mountains of Scotland. But the end of the film depends on everything they do.

Low budget at 4 million, but with beautiful shots of mountains and moor and cloud-shadow. There is little more inspiring than the shadow of clouds across wide, untrammeled earth. No masterpiece, but definitely worth watching, with humanity in the sum of its parts.

Just saw the British film Kill List. Another film worth watching without knowing anything about it. The UK’s response to Audition?

The mounting tension, the lean cuts, the way a certain line is delivered, the ambiguity. Unraveling layer by layer. If you like dark things full of dread, full of wondering.