User Reviews

SHELTER is a single-location thriller set in an underground bunker. The world has just been destroyed by an apocalypse and the story follows the fortunes of the existent survivors as they come to terms with their new world, which very much exists within the confines of four walls and a ceiling and floor.

Inevitably this is low budget stuff which focuses on the psychological angle (as it doesn't cost anything), but the surprise is that it's pretty decent. The shooting style is strong and the film feels both realistic and claustrophobic throughout. The day to day character building stuff is quite interesting, so it's a shame that they spoil things with a non-linear style in which the time frame is all over the place; this makes things needlessly confusing and more than a little annoying.

This movie felt longer than it is, the emotions of the cast and the situation they are dealing with is well conveyed and felt throughout the film, the logical inconsistencies in the movie were distracting.

Had we never seen the person monitoring the camera feeds at the end, it may have felt more complete actually. Its hard to reconcile that the experiment the "subjects" are a part of has no defined purpose. For example, if it were about survival, they proved they could survive. If it is about human morality, the operators/experimenters were in fact the most amoral characters in the plot. I had a lot of trouble understanding how each of them really got into the vault, why they spent so little time dissecting who each other was on the outside, and why they didn't challenge the surroundings more. They found the cameras in the grates after a full year and 3 months.

The relationships between the people were downplayed, but would have had a lot to do with their actions and/or their fate. We saw the marriage of the couple dissolve, somewhat callously but there was not a great explanation or portrayal of what happened. The chronological skipping made for a lot of suspense throughout the film, but sort of left an out for the filmmakers to not tell the entire story and fill the holes left in the skipped time.

The mirror scene at the end and finally a response by the experimenters/shadow company (of locking the door) proved to be the final inconsistency.

The film was interesting as a thought piece, but proved hard to digest and not get caught up in more of the details.

The obvious answer to my title...CUBE. This director took a lot from Cube, obviously not the traps, but the idea of being locked in a sort of maze that seems to have no rhyme or reason, with people randomly chosen to be thrown inside it.

Overall, the movie wasn't very good.

• The acting was below average for sure. The emotions felt "acted". This REALLY hurt scenes that were meant to be tense. The acting was especially bad among the married couple, with the wife being the worst by far.

• Characters actions seem to make little sense....the guy who is in on it seems to be all over the place, one minute he wants a character to be killed off (because he knows there's no Fallout, but talks them into stopping him) and then he seems genuine about not wanting anyone to die.

• The marriage, this was ridiculous. They went from perfectly loving, to having had troubles all along they tell us...? This aspect was almost comical.

• Time jumps. This was absolutely USELESS. It added nothing to the story in anyway what so ever. As noted by another poster, it seems they used this to be able to cut at anytime they wished as to not have to see plot points through. It was a neat idea the first time or two they did it, but eventually it got to where I was fast forwarding the jumps in the past, as we see nothing besides them eating, the couple argue, and the main woman kills a character which adds nothing to the plot.

• The ending. I can do just fine with us not knowing exactly what this "experiment" was for, so I guess that's okay. Though I figured from the first 10 minutes it was an experiment...they have running fresh water, and a gas or electric stove, and an incinerator all working properly...for 1.4 YEARS AFTER THE WORLD ENDS!? Not to mention, lights without a generator. And obviously they're in some kind of office building, because they willingly walked into this place. No one is going to wonder why the 50+ people in all the rooms don't come home, who all happened to go to the same building...? You can say I'm being too harsh, well...the movie wanted to be clever and smart with its twist. So they should at least have it make a little sense if it's trying to be smart.

• I LOVE LOVE LOVE movies where people are isolated to one setting/room, so the fact that this was so lame? That's a huge let down. It tried to be CUBE, and fell flat on its face.

• I give it 3/10 because visually it DIDNT look bad.

Not a bad try at a one room type of movie. the movie looks like it's going to be very bad directing and acting, but the scenes aren't bad and the acting is generally good for the camera work.

I would have actually rated this higher but I had really wish they would have made an ending for this, whether it was good or bad.

Disappointing that it ended that way.

I only write reviews of movies with low rating, which actually are not that bad. Give them a chance!

I watched this because I like movies about apocalypse and post- apocalypse. The last scene made me wonder if this is really the story about apocalypse or a reality show, but... Those people could really live like that if the nuclear war have happened. So, for me, this is a movie about apocalypse.

Story is very cool, I enjoyed watching this. Editing is bad and that is the only thing I don't like. Acting... well for this budget is more than OK! Those five are not great actors, but not bad one either. I wish that there are were information about what happened above them, but with ending like this it is maybe cool to let watchers decide whether nuke attack really happened or not.

If you like apocalyptic movie, make sure to watch this one.

6/10