When I first saw the trailers for Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, depicting DiCaprio with a Boston accent trotting about a haunting insane asylum, I knew I was in for a thrill ride. The last time a director of this experience tackled a genre film (yeah, I'm going to go as far as considering this 'horror'), was Stanley Kubrick with his adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Shining'. And if we learned anything from that, we know just how a master works his magic on a fright film. And it's almost impossible for Scorsese to make a bad film, him and DiCaprio are a match made in heaven. Even if I wanted to see this with an open mind, I knew deed down this movie couldn't be nothing short of fantastic. And, just as I expected, it was just that. The story follows Leo DiCaprio’s Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall is sent to the asylum, along with his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), to look for an inmate that has mysteriously vanished into thin air. Of course, nothing is what it seems at the asylum and the patients and doctors (with excellently evil performances by Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow) seem to be harboring a giant secret. After the initial setup, the film really starts getting into truly nightmarish territory, offering up a disorienting reality as seen through Teddy’s eyes. Between the actual nightmares – ranging from his time liberating Dachau to his wife’s demise at the hands of an arsonist – and the waking nightmares, Teddy’s down and out Marshall is willing to take risks and a beating to get the truth. And really, above all else, this is a film about dealing with guilt and coming to terms with reality, making the psychological and emotional approach Scorsese is known for the perfect fit for the material.
The atmosphere is key here. It really sets the tone of the entire picture. Shutter Island is, by design, a mixture of Gothic clichés. First of all, the entire film takes place on a secluded island with no reach to the outside world. There's a fortress-like mental hospital, a medical staff that is consistently giving off sinister vibes (easy to do when one of the doctors appears to be an ex-Nazi, played by Max Von Sydow), there's a violent hurricane hitting the island making departure by ferry impossible, and then of course there's the mental patients themselves, who are horror movie worthy.
One of the parts I liked most about the film, and it was re-occurring, was the addition of a gruesome back story to each key inmate of the asylum. It just made them so much more vile and scary and overall so much more realistic. Between maniacs and serial killers, people who kill their own families and drown their own kids, you realize how real these side characters are. Which makes it more disturbing, and makes you scared for Daniels as he ventures through each ward. Jackie Harley stuck out especially, as a beaten and scarred psycho. He has the biggest input of all the prisoners, and really sticks out. In a way, it actually makes me excited for the new Nightmare on Elm St now.
Verdict: Shutter Island is mainly about the ride, but for such a fantastic run the end doesn't deliver an adequate pay-off. I don't want to spoil anything for you, because this is a must see, but I can tell you the ending is quite obvious. And don't get the wrong impression - the reveal isn't nothing bad, it's just way to over explained and thus I felt it wasn't played out as good as it could have been. This movie does not rank high on the list of Scorsese's best films, but it's a fine example of a great filmmaker doing what he does best.
verdict:
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