The writer David Foster Wallace once famously said, “A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.” Self-deception happens to the best of us, but director Charles Stone III’s latest drama-turned-action flick throws in an additional curveball: how does one stay sane in the face of personal tragedy? Lila (Viola Davis), understandably, is scarcely in her right mind after her teenage son is murdered in a drive-by shooting. Her rage amplifies as a pair of cops offer the usual platitudes but seem no closer to finding Stephon’s (Aml Ameen) killer. Lila’s only comfort, however small it might be, is a support group with other grieving mothers who recite at the end of each meeting the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change… Unfortunately, for Stephon’s murderer, Lila isn’t all that into accepting things.

Things shift from an interesting look into a mother’s pain (complete with the obligatory flashbacks to the days before Stephon’s death, just to remind us how tight-knit this single-mother household was), to a cat-and-mouse action thriller when Lila meets Eve (Jennifer Lopez) at one of her group meetings. Eve, who lost her daughter at an undefinable earlier juncture, is able to cut through the bullshit and say a lot of the things Lila is certainly thinking but too cautious to say: “You want the people who killed Stephon to feel what you’re feeling.” And with that, the pair of grieving mothers decide to take it upon themselves to do the police work they’re convinced the earnest Detective Holliston (Shea Whigham) and his legitimately lazy partner Alonzo (Chris Chalk) aren’t doing themselves.

For what seems to be, on the surface at least, a run-of-the-mill revenge flick fancied up with female leads instead of the generic blonde-boy-gone-bad, there’s actually (mercifully) a few bits of subtlety in both the performances and the script (by Pat Gilfillan) that carry the first half of the movie along at a promising rate. Lila’s grief, in the capable hands of Davis, never comes off as off-the-handle angry or even hopelessly grief-stricken—she appears on-screen as a mild tempered but strong woman, one who is going to defend the cheesy efforts of the women in the small group to Eve (“they’re just trying to help”), but at the same time isn’t going to get bullied around by a cop entering her home uninvited (“next time, call first”). We see the other women falling apart—one woman has convinced herself that, like Jesus, her son is coming back from the dead—but Lila, despite her love for that other Biblical passage—an eye for an eye—seems a bit more rational than the others. In fact, she takes the useless group advice to heart (“get a hobby”), and begins a project renovating her house. It’s because of Davis’ moving performance we don’t realize at first that our judgment might be just as clouded as Lila’s. As time goes on, some truths are unveiled: Maybe Detective Holliston isn’t so bad at his job. Maybe the women at the group do genuinely care. Maybe Eve, with her idea of a good night being to stake out Stephon’s potential killers, isn’t the best friend to have around. It’s interesting to realize how skewed the viewer’s perspective is by Lila’s inability to see anything good because, after all, that’s how real grief, real depression works.

But just as the character study gets cooking—complete with working class issues like running out of paid time off, caring for a remaining son with limited support, and starting a relationship with a good-natured man when you’re just not quite ready—in comes the vengeance of Lila and Eve, vigilante mothers taking on a hierarchical local gang, starting with the small fries and working up to the big boss. It’s just not as interesting as the drama that Davis and the support group thread seemed to be setting up, and retroactively, almost makes the earnestness in the acting in the first half seem not noteworthy, but bizarre. A twist near the end shakes the entire premise of the film and feels less “a ha” and more revealing of what the film lacks. Maybe the final dupe is that despite moving performances and an interesting B-plot—how working class mothers find support and healing—the A-plot is rather hollow. Davis is powerful as always, and Lopez actually hits the right note with her reckless, action-seeking Eve, but the performances don’t overcome that the more potent story was abandoned halfway through.

Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter is a gripping thriller about a man who is convinced that his dreams of an earth ending storm are a warning signs of impending doom. In almost every scene it is storming out which blend his dreams and reality together making it harder from him to tell what is real. The film has the right amount of unsettling suspense with such a genuine tone that makes it exceptionally eerie.

The opening shot of Take Shelter is of Curtis (Michael Shannon) staring up at dark clouds with yellowish rain splashing down on him. There is a storm coming or at least there is until Curtis wakes up from his dream. He is a caring father to his hearing-impaired daughter (Tova Stewart) and a loving husband to his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain).

Curtis has a vivid dream about a tornado coming toward him while his dog is barking furiously at him. After a few moments the dog snaps the chain it was tied up to and attacks Curtis, viciously biting his forearm. Curtis wakes up terrified and is sweating profusely. The rest of the day he clutches his arm now and then as if he was actually bitten.

Following that nightmare he starts acting more paranoid. He builds a fence in the backyard for his dog (who is normally an inside dog). After putting up the fence he moves on to cleaning up the old storm shelter that may not have been used for many years. He stocks the shelves of the shelter with canned soup; he is beginning to take shelter.

His dreams continue to get more frequent and start involving his daughter. In two consecutive dreams he is trying to protect his daughter from zombie-like people trying to steal her away. Each time he wakes up from these dreams his reactions get worse. First he was just sweating, then he was wetting the bed, and finally he bleeds and nearly has a seizure before waking up.

Realizing that he may have a problem, he checks out a book from the library on mental illness. But he does not stop there; he visits the doctor to try to get help. After the doctor prescribes him with some sleeping pills, he asks Curtis if he has been up to see his mother lately. It seems like an irrelevant question at first but we come to find out that his mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

Having just a simple shelter is not enough for Curtis. He becomes obsessed with the shelter. So much so that he takes out a bank loan in order to build an expansion to it, even hooking up running water and sewage. He borrows large tools for the project from his construction job which ends up getting him fired for doing so. His paranoia may not only cost him his job but also his family.

Michael Shannon has a breakdown scene that may be the best emotional scene of the year. His anxiety, obsession and paranoia increases with each passing scene which is played to near perfection by Shannon. His performance earned him well deserved recognition at the Independent Spirit Awards this year for Best Male Lead.

The role of Samantha must have come pretty natural to Jessica Chastain as she played a similar role as the wife and mother in the magnificent film The Tree of Life. However, this film is her role is centered on her dealing with her husband more so than her being a mother like The Tree of Life did. Overall she had an incredible year in films as she was also in The Help and Coriolanus.

Given the synopsis of Take Shelter, a man that envisions storms of apocalyptic magnitude, it took have easily took the path of laying it on thick with over the top science fiction ploys but thankfully instead it remained very conceivable. The plot may have been a little too thin for the 2 hour runtime. Take Shelter has a slow moving narrative in which the build-up surpasses the outcome. The final scene is quite satisfying though.