Good but overrated thriller with disappointing visuals.

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2018)

Shutter Island is a sometimes mind-bending psycho thriller. It's a good movie with a great cast and it provokes discussion after you've seen it with your friends. It also has a deeper meaning and somewhat of a message for me, which is always a sign for a good film. So overall, I liked it.
What really bothers me, tough, is that it often seems to be seen as the >ultimate psycho thriller< because it is really not.
There is a plot twist in the movie. Admittedly, I can't say how I would have predicted the plot if I didn't know about the existence of that twist before watching, but I doubt my prediction would have been much different. Bottom line here: Seemingly >>small details<< that hint towards the twist aren't at all small. They're in fact pretty obvious at times which, for me, destroys a lot of the myth that's been created around Shutter Island. Though ultimately the plot turns out to have more layers than expected, it still failed to really blow my mind. Once I realized fully what was going on, I thought >>Wow, there's more to it. But really, I could have known<<.
So yes, it's complex, but too much is given away before the actual twist/truth-reveal happens (and yes, it happens and Scorcese wants you know that it's happening).
While that sounded not too great, really the most disappointing aspect about Shutter Island is the way it is made. Right at the start, the two agents are on a ship towards the island. What's actually going on, though, is they're standing in a studio with a truly laughable green screen effect post-producing a horrible looking sea in the background. No wind noises, no wind blowing through the actors' very long coats, it's just cheap. That movie is from scorcese? And what, it had an $80M budget? C'mon. That trend of terrible and unnecessary studio shots (it's not impossible to just shoot on an actual boat, you know) continues through the rest of the cinemtography that has its moments in terms of colour and atmosphere creation, but eventually remains luke warm and is hard for me to oversee in a Martin Scorcese movie.