There are several kinds of people waiting on the apocalypse. Some wait eagerly for the opportunity to rise to heaven while the naysayers stare skyward, jaws agape, while some think of the end of the world not in terms of ascension but in terms of breakdown: mass chaos, scarcity of resources, infrastructural cave-in. We call the latter survivalists: people who bury fifty-gallon oil drums filled with rice in secret spots in the forest, or who practice shooting crossbows off the backs of motorcycles, or who have planned meeting places stocked with canned goods, weapons, and water. Survivalists might use the company b­ackhoe and their retirement savings to dig a shelter in the backyard, one that can withstand a storm—of rain or of desperate masses—or they might mod their cars and motorcycles with flamethrowers, presumably to fend off the crazy hordes that take to the road in the inevitable gas war.

Those last two examples come from the 2011 films Take Shelter and Bellflower, respectively, both of which are concerned with the impending apocalypse, real and imagined. That these films should surface now isn’t surprising; everyone from Harold Camping to environmental scientists to the ancient Mayan calendar tells us it’s about time, and, besides, plenty of filmmakers got there first. The significance of these two films is that they take a look not so much at the apocalypse itself but at how human relationships blossom and crumble in the days preceding it. The poster for Take Shelter depicts Curtis (Michael Shannon) wrapping protective arms around his wife and daughter against an ominous bird-blackened sky. Bellflower’s shows Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Milly (Jessie Wiseman) in a deep embrace against a backdrop of fiery explosion. In the end, both images seem to say that what’s fascinating about the apocalypse isn’t necessarily what we do to protect ourselves—it’s what we do to protect the ones we love.

Take Shelter is a tightly wound, formally precise potboiler about a man unable to shake his premonition that a giant storm will destroy humanity, and thus compelled to create a shelter to hide away with his family. Bellflower, which by comparison is something of a hot mess (it was shot for no money on a homemade camera, albeit one that takes beautiful pictures, and the story is loose and watery, as though pieced together in the...