You can see it in his eyes. As U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels ferries his way between Boston Harbor and the black cloud-shrouded Shutter Island on the horizon, it’s easy to see that he has more weighing on him than a simple case of green-around-the-gills seasickness. Scruffy and disheveled, the man looks weary beyond his years. But as he and fellow marshal Chuck Aule are ushered into the fortress-like Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, it seems that his personal baggage will have to be tossed in the backseat for the time being. This facility may be the most advanced of its kind in this modern age of 1954, but its damaged inhabitants are probably the most dangerous group of killers in the world. Teddy needs to stay sharp. The case at hand? A deranged patient who murdered her three children has somehow disappeared from a locked and barred room. The marshals have been called to solve this seemingly impossible mystery. But with every clue found, every question asked, and every shifty-eyed obfuscation and false reply given, Teddy becomes convinced that there’s more going on here than just a missing woman. Then a hurricane-force gale blows in, keeping the frustrated marshals locked down on this bleak and ominous rock for days. And the migraines and dreams begin—dreadful visions of war atrocities Teddy experienced years earlier and disquieting visits from the beloved wife he recently lost. What’s happening here? Is he going crazy himself? Or are the jagged shards of some gruesome puzzle slowly coming together? Perhaps a more pressing question might be: Once a good man peeks in on Shutter Island’s secrets, will he ever be allowed to leave?
As I walked out of the press screening for Shutter Island, I was greeted, as usual, by a studio representative with pad in hand and a “What did you think?” on her lips. I hesitated. I hadn’t yet had time to really even get my head around everything I’d just sat through. So there were only two words that surfaced. But even though I’ve since had ample opportunity to come up with more showy descriptors or pithy review statements, I think I’ll stick with my original assessment of gruesome and brilliant. The story itself—based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, known for his blue-collar crime story Mystic River—is all pulp fiction thriller. But its execution here has a ball-juggling intelligence to it. Director Martin Scorsese uses long, lingering tracking shots, discordant, sweeping musical passages and heightened sound effects to echo classic Alfred Hitchcock at his drum-tight thriller peak. In fact, if Hitchcock had made a picture about Norman Bates’ years in a mental ward, I’m convinced it would have been at Ashecliffe. Audiences are kept constantly guessing at reality as the action slowly funnels down to one simple and final question that makes all the pieces fit snugly into place. And though not truly spiritual in nature, that last moment makes a powerful and thought-provoking statement about a man’s overwhelming thirst for goodness—while chin deep in all of the worst evils mankind can inflict upon itself. But there’s the rub. Scorsese’s never been one to shy away from the grisly or raw, and he surely doesn’t here. If this had really been a classic thriller from the 1950s, the coarse language would have been softened and the dark violence would have been dialed down. But we’re half a century away from the ’50s. And Martin is not Alfred. So the worst of the worst is splayed out in shuddering openness on Shutter Island.