Shutter Island Review
A legitimate thriller, or a mindless brain-tease?
Jesse Davis
Issue date: 3/1/10 Section: Entertainment
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One misconception I had was that this film would be a horror movie. The reality was that this film was more of a thriller. The film refuses to use scare tactics like having a massive zombie jump out of the screen at you. This film was most frightening when it would show violent and disturbing images. This is even more impressive considering that blood and gore was used in moderation.
The blood in the movie deserves a mention in itself. Along with being realistic it was used in awkward, yet effective, ways. When a women in a red dress smiles as there is blood smeared across her face, with three dead children at her feet, that is thrill, not horror. The film's objective was to show emotion in raw, insane form.
Images such as those were ever-present in the film but not at a monotonous rate.
Martin Scorsese directed this movie with the same dramatic, descriptive scenes as his previous film with DiCaprio, The Departed. Scorsese does an excellent job of giving realistic dramatic scenes without being cliché or overrated. He uses gritty, nasty scenery that comes closer to real life than most films--a dirty jail cell, or in contrast, a clean doctors office. Scorsese does a good job of bringing out the beauty of the environment and the qualities of his chosen actors.
Leonardo DiCaprio comes to the screen as a highly decorated Army Veteran who is now the duly-appointed Federal MarshalTeddy Daniels. Shutter Island is a hospital known for housing only the most dangerous criminal minds in America. Daniels' presence at Shutter Island is due to the mysterious disappearance of a dangerous inmate. The inmate escaped from the institution with a locked door on her cell, bars on her windows, eluding nearly a dozen guards. The inmate was a lady who was convicted of drowning her three children in the back of her home.
After taking close inspection of the room she disappeared from, Daniels finds a note that says, "What is the law of 4, who is 67?"
Records indicated that there were 66 patients at the facility and that a mysterious 67th was present at Shutter Island.
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