Shutter Island (2010)

Based on Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel of the same name, Shutter Island arrived in cinemas in February 2010 after a delay from its originally planned October 2009 release date, when Paramount pushed it back citing marketing concerns. The story follows Teddy Daniels, a Second World War veteran working as a United States Marshal, who travels to Ashecliffe Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane situated on an island off the Massachusetts coast, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. What begins as a procedural mystery quickly pulls the ground out from under both its protagonist and the audience, threading wartime trauma, institutional dread and questions of perception through a setting that feels almost wilfully hostile. Lehane, whose crime fiction tends to root psychological damage in specific American landscapes (his novel Mystic River had already received a high-profile adaptation by 2003), provided Scorsese with source material that sits at the more Gothic, expressionistic end of the genre.

Martin Scorsese is, by 2010, a director whose career needs very little introduction on this site. From his early character studies through to crime epics and beyond, he has consistently shown an interest in men whose grip on reality, identity or moral certainty is loosening. His previous genre excursion into psychological unease, Cape Fear (1991), demonstrated a willingness to use genre conventions as a vehicle for something more unsettling, and Shutter Island sits in a similar space, polished but operating in the register of nightmares rather than realism. The King of Comedy (1982), another of his films reviewed here, similarly places the audience inside a distorted, unreliable perspective, making you complicit in a protagonist's fractured sense of the world. For Shutter Island, he worked again with cinematographer Robert Richardson and drew on a visual palette rooted in classic noir and German Expressionism, which gives the film its particular atmosphere of seeping dread. The production was handled through his own Sikelia Productions alongside Phoenix Pictures, distributed by Paramount, and ran to a runtime of 138 minutes.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Scorsese had by this point developed one of the more fruitful director-actor relationships in contemporary American cinema, with Shutter Island being their fourth collaboration. DiCaprio brings to Teddy Daniels the kind of physical and emotional intensity that had already served him well across a range of demanding roles, including in Blood Diamond (2006), in which he also stars. Opposite him, Mark Ruffalo plays his partner Chuck Aule, with Ben Kingsley as the hospital's lead psychiatrist and Max von Sydow as a German doctor whose presence carries its own quiet, unsettling charge. Michelle Williams appears in a role that keeps the film's emotional stakes grounded even as the plot spirals outward. It is, on paper, a formidable ensemble, and the casting reflects the film's ambition to be something more than a genre exercise.

First watch? Utterly gripping. Second watch? You’ll spend the whole runtime yelling at DiCaprio to stop being so gullible. But even knowing the twist, there’s still magic in the madness. Scorsese crafts this asylum-on-a-rock like a gothic fever dream with stormy skies, twisty hallways, nurses in starched white who seem to materialize out of thin air. DiCaprio’s Teddy Daniels is all simmering rage and haunted eyes, chasing a phantom fugitive while the island itself seems to conspire against him. The performances are razor-sharp, and the soundtrack is a low, pulsing dread that never lets up. The twist, though. Once you know it, the film becomes a tragedy masquerading as a thriller. It’s like watching Fight Club after the first time. Still technically brilliant, but you’re just waiting for the big reveal to land. The second act drags a tad, and the “symbolism” slaps you with a wet newspaper, but the finale still lands like a gut punch. Not really rewatchable unless you enjoy watching a man unravel while screaming “YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS ISN’T REAL, DUMBASS!” But as a one-time ride through madness, guilt, and the lies we tell ourselves? Unmatched.

I keep coming back to that Fight Club comparison, because it really is the most honest way to put it: there is a category of film that works best when you don't know what's coming, and no amount of craft quite compensates for losing that particular kind of innocence. That said, the craft here is genuinely hard to dismiss. Scorsese keeps the whole thing teetering on the edge of operatic excess without quite tipping over, and that balancing act alone is worth something. The supporting cast, Von Sydow in particular, doing so much with so little screen time, gives the film a texture that survives repeat viewings even when the plot mechanics have long since lost their grip. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favour and go in as cold as possible. The first time through is something you only get once.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 2010  | Watched: 2025-06-25

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Trailer

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More from Martin Scorsese: Italianamerican (1974) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Gangs of New York (2002) · Cape Fear (1991)
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