chunk: In Lagrange, Ohio, Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) has apocalyptic dreams, and visual and auditory hallucinations; of rain "like fresh motor oil", swarms of menacing black birds, and being harmed by people close to him. He hides all of this from his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), and their deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). He instead channels his anxieties into a compulsive obsession to build a storm shelter in his backyard; however, his increasingly strange behavior -- including a tendency to cut ties with anyone in his life that has harmed him only in his dreams -- strains his relationship with his family, friends, employer, and the close-knit town. Curtis grudgingly sees a counselor at a free clinic, with whom he talks about his family's psychological history (his mother (Kathy Baker) suffers from paranoid schizophrenia that surfaced in her at about the same age that Curtis is now).