"Shutter Island": It's pretty great, actually

I don’t know where you come from, but where I live the arrival of a new Martin Scorsese is an event. So, I’ve been a little surprised by how Shutter Island has been mostly greeted with a sea of shrugs and a chorus of pshaws in the lead-up to opening night on Friday. I include myself in this—I had to half-drag myself to a free advance screening last night, for crissakes—and I place the blame squarely on the ad campaign, which makes the movie look like a sorta shitty mystery story set in a totally spooktacular insane asylum.

Sure enough, that description holds for pretty much the first hour or so of Shutter Island. As I watched the film unfold, I feared I had stepped in another ridiculous pile of Dennis Lehane’s kid-killing bullshit. But in the end I was expertly sucked in by a master filmmaker, who justified (and greatly improved my impression of in retrospect) the shopworn police procedural silliness of the film’s first half with a disquieting conclusion that puts Shutter Island squarely in the tradition of Scorsese’s portraits of obsessive men at war with themselves. It might not be Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, but it definitely belongs in the company of the underrated The Aviator, which Shutter Island ends up strongly invoking, and not only because Leonardo DiCaprio spends a lot of time in both films muttering to himself. (I can’t go on without venturing into spoiler-riffic territory.)

As my wife somewhat sarcastically said as we walked out of the theater, Shutter Island is a “twist” movie. But the twist really isn’t that shocking; what sticks in your mind after seeing Shutter Island is what sticks in your mind after lots of Scorsese movies, which is how the relentless demons inside of us never go away no matter how violently we beat them back. Honestly—and I say this entice movie fans and discourage the tourists—Shutter Island is a difficult and even alienating film at times. Without giving too much away, there’s definitely a devastatingly disturbing scene or two that will send some people scurrying for the exits. It’s a scary movie, but not the kind of scary movie people tend to like.

The obvious comparison point is The Shining; I can’t think of another film that goes out of its way so consciously not to deliver the usual thrills of the horror genre, and yet succeeds at creating a slow-building dread that starts in the pit of your stomach and spreads for days afterward. Shutter Island is an uncommon horror film in the Saw era; for Scorsese, it explores old themes with fresh verve and vital intensity.