Written by: Laeta Kalogridis
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer
Rating: [4/5]
Stories centered on unreliable narrators allow for some fascinating storytelling choices. A place where we cannot fully trust even the person we follow in the story. It heightens our senses and elevates a healthy amount of paranoia based on everything we see and more importantly, how the protagonist interprets it. Shutter Island serves as one of the better examples of how this can elevate a story and does so to a great degree.
US Marshalls Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) arrive on Shutter Island, which houses a psychiatric hospital for those deemed in need of intensive mental care. With an objective to find a patient who went missing, they begin asking some serious questions of the doctors of the facility led by Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) who seems cagey in assisting.
It astounds to look at the absurd range of Martin Scorsese and the films he chooses to take on and add his signature style. He certainly has his favorite topics and areas to explore but when the man decides to take detours into something as mysterious and verging on horror like this feature, we get something special. Something with a troubling center that allows for the discovery of something very disturbing. This feature stands out amongst the rest of his works because of the genre nature of it but leave it to Scorsese to enter this genre and completely knock it out of the park. Ultimately it makes sense Scorsese would thrive in this genre knowing how much he loves cinema and its history of it in all forms. As someone who loves horror and the specific way it makes for an effective viewing experience, he used those techniques to his benefit.
This feature enjoys living in the mystery of the island as the setting provides its own set of horror, which allows everything else to pile on to an unsettling experience. You have the isolation of this facility on an island meaning help would take some time to arrive should it be needed. Additionally, you have some troubled patients who could resort to violence and then some doctors who most certainly cannot be trusted because of their elusive behavior. We see this story through the eyes of Teddy and must get to the bottom of it with him, but nothing comes particularly straightforward in this feature.
Shutter Island famously pulls the rug under the audience in the way it gives the appearance of going in one direction and completely going in another. In several moments it completely flips the script allowing you to rethink everything you have just watched. This style of storytelling means the audience cannot trust everything they see but also we navigate this story with an unreliable narrator. You have individuals of authority who cannot be trusted like the psychiatrists and law enforcement with Teddy and Chuck. It gives us nothing to attach to bringing a sense of reality to the story making for an incredibly invigorating experience.
Seeing this film for the first time years ago, some images remain seared into my brain because of the impression they made and how it affects Teddy. From the patient shushing at Teddy upon his arrival at the institution and the moment where the protagonist has one of his many hallucinations where he holds what appears to be his deceased wife Dolores (Michelle Williams). Each of these moments seeks to elicit quite an emotional reaction from us and it most certainly gets the job done effectively. Several jump scares really land well because of the amount of tension building throughout the film making the atmosphere ripe for something to creep you out and unsurprisingly Scorsese thrives when playing around in this genre.
No one can turn down the opportunity to watch a Scorsese and DiCaprio collaboration and they deliver once again together. DiCaprio uses his movie star status to the benefit of this film. He has this charm that immediately disarms him to us and we automatically stay by his side throughout the narrative even if things begin to get fishy. We have this preconceived notion of what type of characters he portrayed at this point of his career, which made his decision to take on this role so gratifying because he does a splendid job letting us follow him through Teddy’s complete mental decline and all of the surprises the narrative has for us.
Utterly thrilling and impactful, Shutter Island takes you with it through its windy story and descent into some madness. The feature provides plenty of twists you never see coming allowing for a fun dissection of trying to piece everything together. Scorsese delivers yet another great film delving into a different genre and unsurprisingly succeeding within it. Plus we get another great collaboration with DiCaprio adding to the long list of strong features this pair have done together and hopefully continue to do so.
Films with Josh 
