Pun Salad

Curtis, played by Michael Shannon, is a decent guy in small-town Ohio. He has a loving wife and a cute daughter (unfortunately deaf). A decent job doing some sort of drilling. A dog. A truck.

But he's haunted by dreams, visions, and hallucinations, all of impending doom (illustrated with some minor special effects): a killer storm that will devastate his home and family. Also, his dog turns mean. Curtis becomes obsessed with constructing an expanded storm shelter in his yard, stocking it for long-term survival. This strains everything: his finances, his job, his relationship with his wife and friends.

Worse, Curtis is the same age as his mom was when she came down with paranoid schizophrenia. Could his premonitions simply be a genetic echo kicking his brain around?

The acting is good, and the overall plot is gripping. However, it's way too long, with too many scenes drawn out intolerably. Building up suspense is one thing. But I kept wishing they'd fast-forward in some spots. This is something that could have comfortably fit in a one-hour TV drama anthology series that (drat!) they don't do any more.

My mind also kept going to practical considerations: There's no way Curtis's shelter is watertight, so he's in for real trouble if the Armageddon storm involves flooding. Also, a periscope would have been nice, so he could see when it's safe to emerge.