Take Shelter: Haunting but Thin

"Take Shelter" is a quiet, slow-moving, sometimes boring and repetitious tale of a working-class man in the rural midwest (played well by Michael Shannon) who is haunted by dreams and visions that seem to be premonitions of planetary doom.

The visions are captured well, at least initially. Some of them are terrifying. And Shannon and Jessica Chastain do a fine job bringing this working-class couple to life in an authentic way. But the script goes nowhere. It's one vision after another, and they do get repetitious after a half-hour.

Filmmaker Jeff Nichols (his second feature film) definitely has talent, but here he has crafted a film that is a long Act 1. No Act 2. It's all set-up and no conclusion. There is a lame pseudo-conclusion in the last five minutes that seems to have been thrown together because all his friends told him the script had no ending.

When I say it has no ending, I mean that it has no organic one -- one that emerges naturally out of the story. Add Nichols' name to the long list of younger filmmakers today who don't know how to write second acts. I'm not sure if it's the music-video culture that has done this, or the epidemic of ADD, or the disappearance of novels from filmmaking culture.

Call it the Sofia Coppola school of filmmaking. Conjure up a vision of a world, describe it to us with great use of music along the way, and then it's over. Scripts without any story arc. Is it postmodern or just old-fashioned lazy story-writing?

I have seen very recently, in only the last year, a rebellion against this story-less approach. The most exciting new filmmakers of 2011 (Mike Cahill of "Another Earth," Evan Glodell of "Bellflower," David Schwimmer of "Trust," to name a few) have an intense interest in stories. Here's hoping that their approach takes hold in the film schools.

One could even add Nicolas Refn of "Drive" to that list, even though he's been directing films for more than 10 years now. "Drive" is so fresh and new and such a departure for him that it really represents a new beginning. It also is likely to become a touchstone and enduring inspiration for legions of 21-year-old filmmakers. I hope it helps set the tone for artistic young filmmakers in the 2010s.

But bottom line: the reason "Take Shelter" didn't work for me is that I got very bored after a half-hour. The slack pace and repetitiousness became unbearable. I'd also say that the film ultimately is shallow.