A Horrible Movie

Rating: 1/10 (3 March 2010)

This review contains major spoilers. Please do not read any further if you have not yet seen this film and you have any interest in seeing the film at any time in the future.
This film makes no damned sense, unless the point of the film is supposed to be that the people running the insane asylum are more insane than the inmates.
For this film to make any sense, you have to accept the premise that psychiatrists who actually care about a mentally ill patient would try to cure such patient by doing things that would drive a sane person crazy; that they would play cruel head games that encourage delusional beliefs. How can any sane person believe that giving Teddy/Andrew evidence to support his delusions is going to cure him of delusions? In fact, as the film progresses, we see Teddy/Andrew getting more deluded, more paranoid, more violent. The role-playing is clearly counter-productive.
Giving Teddy/Andrew reasons to believe his delusions would not cure him. This is proved by the fact that there are numerous people on the IMDb boards who believe Teddy was sane all along, throughout the film. If the role-playing can't even convince these viewers of the truth, how is it supposed to convince Teddy/Andrew?
And for this film to make any sense, you also have to believe that these same doctors would give a startling degree of freedom to one of the asylum's most violent killers. Andrew/Teddy attacks a patient and knocks out a guard. He blows up a car, for goodness sake! That alone should prove it was insane to give him any freedom to wander alone, even for a short time.
The movie was set up as a mystery - what is the secret of Shutter Island? But the resolution (that Teddy/Andrew was insane all along, and the doctors were pretending to be evil because they thought that would cure him of his delusions) makes no sense. There is nothing worse than a mystery where the solution breaks all rules of logic. It reminds me of the following joke:
Dennis Lehane: What is furry, has four legs, purrs, and reads the newspaper every day? Richard Nathan: I don't know. Dennis Lehane: A cat. I lied about the newspaper.
I thought that joke was annoying the first time I heard it, and it's annoying as the basis of the mystery in "Shutter Island."
Furthermore, the resolution is not the result of any actions taken by the protagonist. The role-playing game doesn't lead Teddy/Andrew to discover the truth himself. He is merely a passive listener as the solution is explained to him. The breaks several major rules of screen writing.
And what about the very end? Most people interpret Teddy/Andrew's last line as meaning Andrew is only faking his regression, so that he can get a lobotomy and avoid facing the truth. But if he were faking it, why would he give this away to the doctor playing Chuck? And why are so many people moved by this act of cowardice? Can there be anything more cowardly than someone choosing to get a lobotomy to avoid facing the truth about himself? Are we supposed to empathize with someone who chooses to destroy his own intellect because he doesn't have the guts to face the truth?
I cannot understand how anyone can think this is an intelligent screenplay.