Shutter Island is a 2010 thriller directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo. It takes place in the 1950s, and focuses around two Marshalls investigating the disappearance of a mental patient from an insane asylum on an island. However, over time it’s revealed that there is something extremely sinister going on in shutter island.

I recently discussed this movie with my good friend Augustus on our podcast, Cinemix. Our general consensus was that this movie is quite good at keeping up tension, but the ending is a little polarizing. Just like in our podcast, this review will contain spoilers, as it’s very hard to talk about this movie without talking about the ending. In the last couple scenes of shutter island, it’s revealed that the main character, a U.S Marshall named a Teddy Daniels, is actually a patient at shutter island named Andrew Laeddis, and that his partner is actually his psychiatrist. The whole investigation on the island, was actually all an experiment in order to break into his psyche and stop his delusions of being a U.S Marshall. This twist ending is interesting, however, it feels a little unearned, at least to me, since the entire movie It’s implied that the ending reveal is that shutter island is doing experiments on it’s patients to develop mind control, and by having the twist be the complete opposite, I felt it undermined the experience as a whole. However, that’s not to say that they didn’t give clues or hints as to the truth in this movie. In fact, this movie has some of the best Easter eggs and secrets hidden throughout it. In one scene, at the beginning, teddy and his partner must give up their guns to the warden upon arriving at the island. Teddy, who used to be a real U.S Marshall before being committed to an asylum, easily unholsters his gun and hands it in. But his partner, who is in reality his psychiatrist, fumbles and has to take off his gun belt to hand in, because he doesn’t know how to use a gun, since he’s not a real Marshall. Another secret occurs when the Marshalls begin interrogating patients, behind both Teddy and the patient they are interrogating, a guard can be seen. However there is no guard behind Teddy’s partner. This is a subtle indication that Teddy is in reality a patient. Shutter Island is full of little secrets like those, and this makes it a great movie to analyze.

The acting is actually quite good in this movie. DiCaprio has some emotional scenes during some of the dream sequences where he really gets to show his talent. Mark Ruffalo however, did something really interesting. The whole movie, whenever he looks at teddy, it isn’t a look of respect or admiration for his “partner,” but rather a look of observation or amusement. This stood out, and it made the movie more believable.

Shutter Island still has it’s flaws however. It’s a little gratuitous when it comes to showing that the asylum is creepy, and there’s whole needless sequences at the beginning designed simply to create spooky ambience. The movie also uses very annoying musical swells at times, and since I made the mistake of watching this movie at around one in the morning, this especially got on my nerves.

Overall, despite it’s subjective ending, Shutter Island is a good movie, and a good thriller. It doesn’t really feel like typical Scorsese, but I would still recommend this movie.