Looking on the surface, Take Shelter and The Invitation do not have too much in common. Take Shelter is the story about Curtis (Michael Shannon) who has prophetic dreams of a devastating storm, his quest of building a storm shelter to survive it, and how it affects his life, particularly with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and his deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). The Invitation is about Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) who are invited to a party by Will’s ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard). Before long Will is suspecting that there is more to this party that meets the eye.
These movies are both in the same thriller category that I like to call a reveal movie. It’s a film that transparently setting up a question to the audience, a question they will nurture with hints and clues throughout the movie, before ultimately revealing the truth by the end. The quintessential movie in this category is Split. We are told of the Beast personality multiple times throughout the movie, and we are also told of how impossible that this personality could exist as the Horde (James McAvoy) view him as. The viewer can be persuaded from one opinion to the other during the course of the movie before the ending shows that the Beast was all that was promised by the Horde and more.
The mystery queried by Take Shelter is if the night terrors that Curtis is experiencing are warning him of a real life coming storm, or if it is a symptom of schizophrenia, a condition that we are shown is in his family.
The Invitation asks the question if there is something sinister behind this dinner party, or if Will is being too paranoid and making connections that aren’t really there.
The difference between these two movies is that I can see either two options of Take Shelter being true and making a meaningful narrative. With The Invitation, I can only see one option since the very beginning of the film that would create a meaningful narrative.
I’ll explain the options of Take Shelter first and how they can both be viable routes for the story to take. No matter what direction the story takes, it shows how paranoia, a lack of communication and mental illness can effect a person and ruin relationships. Curtis feels that he is unable to accurately explain his dreams to others around him and sees what damage he causes. He later decides to see a specialist and talk to his wife about those dreams, and attempts to fix his broken relationship. This is exemplified by his struggles to learn sign language early in the movie, to his growing proficiency later when he opens up to others. What the first three quarters of this movie presents us with is a movie that can go in any direction and be worthwhile.
Whether the storm is real or not, it still shows an accurate portrayal of mental illness and what it can do if not taken care of and talked about. if the storm is real, the first portion of the movie is a cautionary tale on lack of communication to a loved one about anything. If the storm is not real, it is explicitly about schizophrenia and how it can affect someone’s life.
Sidenote: I kind of feel that the ending of Take Shelter is a bit greedy and wants to have it’s cake and eat it too. The movie seemingly ends with a false alarm storm; a storm that came, but was no where near as terrible as Curtis’ dream and Curtis and his family seeing a doctor and getting the next steps to battle his condition. However, in an epilogue scene, Curtis and his family is playing on a beach when, in the distance, the storm Curtis had been dreaming of appears. To me, it felt like they wanted to have both endings, one where the storm is just an hallucination, and one where the storm is real. It worked fine enough for me, but seemed a little greedy.
This is where the problem with The Invitation arrises. So much of the movie is predicated on Will questioning the motives of the party-goers, and them denying them. The question I had throughout the movie was “What would be the point of the movie if the party was normal?” What if this is all in Will’s head and there really isn’t any sinister forces? My answer was that there really wasn’t one. There was not the strong throughline of mental illness that Take Shelter had, and if our main character was just paranoid, I felt that there would have been no point other than the filmmaker gloating that they got you to believe that the party was malevolent. And I don’t think that is a good enough reason for a movie to exist. So much of the film’s running time before the reveal is focused on teasing and misleading the audience that there didn’t feel like a strong enough throughline. It could have been a study of jealousy and paranoia in a relationship like marriage. Have more of a backstory and examples of Will’s paranoia in his previous relationship, because my impression of him was that he was a fairly level-headed man throughout the film. The reveal could have worked, if it gave the other option a viable reason for existing.
Let’s take the example of Split, and the options that the Beast is real, and that the Beast is not real. If it turned out that the Beast was not as advertised by the Horde, then the film would still work as an exploration of extreme mental illness and how trauma from our past affects us. If the Beast is real, then all those previous points are still valid, while being a set up for future films. Both reveals are equally plausible in the meta of the film itself. It could have made either choice and had a point to being made. It could have even had more meaning, if the movie had some more religious symbolism and imagery, as the Horde see the Beast as an almost religious figure, a saviour that the personalities are not sure exists.
Both of these movies establish early that there is a fork in the road upcoming, and they can only take one. However for this concept to work, each road must be viable to take. If one road is wide open and one runs directly into a brick wall, it is near impossible for me to believe that the movie will take that path. And if the film does not have much more going for it, it provides a predictable slog that is hard to watch the whole way through.
The Sensations of Storytelling 