Take Shelter (2011)

If you want suspense, this movie delivers it like few I've seen lately. It's not a murder mystery, nor a thriller, nor a crime film. It's not a "disaster" movie or an "action" film. It's about the loneliness of a man who sees things no one else sees.

Michael Shannon plays an average guy whose nightmares and waking hallucinations tell him a storm is coming, a storm unlike anything anyone has seen. That simple premise plays out in his marriage, his work, his health, and his life in a rural Ohio community.

The suspense comes from watching the effect of this premise on him and the people around him. They are people whose lives are about paying the mortgage and keeping their health insurance, and caring for their children. The stakes could not be any higher. 

Take Shelter is worth watching if only for the towering performance by Michael Shannon as an everyman as complex and self-aware as Hamlet. His chemistry with Jessica Chastain as his wife is volatile.

The ending may momentarily disappoint you. There is no high-speed chase, no special effects, no heroic triumph over adversity. But, if you pause a moment, you will see that it answers every question the movie raises.