A Tale of Two Movies

fowlerphoto-45650

The Shelter is movie that is really a movie of halves. The first half delves into the depravity of a man who has lost all hope on life..both in the world and mostly in himself. While the second half has the man confronting the demons of his past which forces him to finally atone for his sins.

Thomas (Michael Paré) is a man who is basically eaten alive from the inside out due to circumstances in his past that he just can't seem to escape from. The first half of the movie builds up the story of Thomas, though somewhat vaguely, being down on his luck and a hard boiled hard ass.

While appreciate the attempt of building up the backstory of Thomas, I felt the movie tried to focus a little too heavy on him being a hard ass and womanizer in certain parts rather than build his backstory in a more organic way.

The second half of the movie is where I feel the movie really shines. Thomas finds his way into an empty house and this is where I feel Director John Fallon's horror background really shines.

Fallon crafts an interesting, paranormal and isolated setting for the character Thomas which has him confront his past and ultimately atone for his misdeeds.

There are a lot of religious under and overtones but also the story is open ended enough to let someone interpret the meanings of these religious metaphors according to how they hold their own beliefs.

While I do like a bit of the open natures of the story in the second half I did feel the story could have been LITTLE tighter instead of being as vague as it was in some parts. But then again I determined my own meaning from everything which I am sure could be different for another viewer.

Production wise the movie is ok. Though I felt parts of it were too BRIGHT for the mood the movie was going for. I felt a lot of the bleak and deserted street scenes were very good locations but the look on film was too colorful and bright which kind of killed the mood I thought of the scenery.

Overall, I felt The Shelter was a decent watch though I think the second half of the movie is the superior part of the film whereas the first half I think tried to touch more on making Thomas look macho cool instead of a more tragic character. At least at first.

I would give this a 6.5 if I was able...the .5 coming from seeing director John Fallon get his ass kicked by Thomas in a scene! Always a good day to see that!!

score 6/10

fowlerphoto-45650 31 May 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4185229/