Good acting, great build-up but disappointing

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2015)

It's hard to write a review for a movie like this without spoiling it. My main frustrations with Shutter Island have to do with the eventual explanations for what is actually going on. It's obvious with a movie like this that there'll be twists and surprises, possibly betrayals, re-interpretations, changed meanings of scenes. I guess what's important is that people care - if people are talking about it, they must have been engaged by the story, the acting, directing, music and dialogue.
The plot is very reminiscent of The Wicker Man. I began to think I was watching a remake. So then I felt I knew exactly where the movie was going. Nevertheless, as a suspenseful thriller it was working very well. It was getting late but I ended up watching the whole rest of the movie. You feel that DiCaprio's character is on the verge of uncovering something, the bunny-hole continues to get deeper. You want him to prevail and confront whatever evil there might be.
All the people on this island are acting very suspiciously from the beginning. We wonder whether that means something is up or if there's a simpler explanation. Maybe they're all just tense because of the situation - a prisoner (or "patient") has escaped and gone missing. But the clues don't add up - there aren't any witnesses and the detectives are having difficulty getting the information they require. What's being hidden from them? Are the sinister rumours about the island true? What's really going on in the secret places they can't get to or don't even know about?
I found the ending cheap and ambiguous in a frustrating way. You trust a movie like this, you go for the ride trusting it will come together at the end. It's fascinating at least as a journey with Leonardo's tortured main character. We empathise with him and his frustrations, his anger. He has painful memories, unfinished business. We don't expect everything to be answered, but we do expect things to make sense, to be there for a reason. I can't stand murder-mysteries where every character acts like they might have done it and then randomly one of them was behind it the whole time. Like a Scooby-Doo episode. Shutter Island feels a bit like that.
It's clear the people on the island are not very smart or responsible. There are so many things that don't make sense in retrospect. The only interpretation that works for me would require more resolution or clearness at the end. Some follow-up. As it is, I feel cheated. A great idea for a story, well-made, ruined by the ending. The conclusion they use could work but then a lot of characters should have been acting very differently. It's convenient and feels like a last minute decision. It leaves a bad taste as Spielberg's War of the Worlds did (with its very rushed and anti- climactic ending).
I liked the atmosphere and the build-up a lot. Maybe there's more detail than I realised. But the more I think about it, the more holes I notice. Dumb, unnecessary holes. Huge gaps in logic. There is so little compassion. I was left disliking most of the characters. They could have made things so much simpler for themselves. Compare that to 12 Monkeys which had a completely unexpected ending for me. I sat there thinking for 10 minutes about it. It changed everything and made everything simpler. It fitted perfectly. I wanted to watch it again. Not to mention the spine-tingling twists in classic movies like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense. With Shutter Island, I enjoyed the first 7/8ths but disliked the ending and don't really want to see it again.