Movie review: Shelter

This Julianne Moore chiller starts well, goes bonkers, and comes out almost kitsch

Shelter

Cert: 15, 112 mins

Starring: Julianne Moore, Jonathan Rhys Meyers

This chiller, starring Julianne Moore, is a strange beast. It begins as a smart old-fashioned psychological thriller, with Moore, as a sceptical psychoanalyst (aren’t they all), interviewing a man (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) with multiple personalities. Separate selves that seem to know more than they should… but then, frankly, it just goes bonkers.

Crazy bonkers. Screenwriter-had-malaria bonkers. There are past lives. People vomiting earth. Satan-worshiping mountain witches. Ancient curses. A women who sees through the eyes of a child. A mystery virus. A mystery symbol. A mystery spirit. Satan worshipping mountain witches (that bit can’t be emphasised enough).

And yet, at some point towards the end, as Moore battles to uncover the riddle of it all and save her daughter (before it’s too late!), it gets so silly, Meyers having so many personalities I actually lost count, and so bizarre, you end up kind of liking it again. It’s fallen into ironic kitsch by this point, of course, rather than the presumably intended target of spine-tingling terror, but as Meyers finds out in the end, you can’t have everything.

5 out of 10

Stuart McGurk

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