Neither logical nor believable

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2010)

Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane and adapted for the screen by Laeta Kalogridis, Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller Shutter Island is set in 1954 on a remote island off the Massachusetts coast that houses Ashecliffe, a mental hospital for the criminally insane. This is where Teddy Daniels, a United States Marshal played by Leonardo DiCaprio, arrives with his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient who was incarcerated after murdering her three children. The missing woman appears to have vanished barefoot without a trace from her locked cell during the night after leaving a strange note.
Backed by production designer Dante Ferretti and cinematographer Robert Richardson, Scorsese builds a dark, foreboding atmosphere that soon escalates into full-blown uncertainty and dread as the story unfolds. Incorporating aspects of different genres, Shutter Island keeps the viewer off-balance and unable to ascertain with certainty what is real and what is fantasy until the very end. As the investigation begins, we soon discover that the marshal has some back stories of his own that are making things more difficult for him. These include nightmare visions of liberating Dachau at the end of World War II and of lining up and shooting Nazi guards as payback. He is also beset with migraine headaches and flashback visions of his wife Delores (Michelle Williams) who died in a fire.
Teddy and Chuck question patients and orderlies who last saw the missing woman but things become more interesting when they interrogate the psychiatrist in charge, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley). Cawley talks a great deal about his disdain for pre-frontal lobotomies and use of Thorazine and his preference for talk-based therapy but puzzlingly refuses to provide the investigators with important documents they need for their investigation. Also interviewed is Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow) whose Germanic persona causes Teddy to have flashbacks of Dachau and raises doubts in his mind that he is being told the truth. People talk in whispers and everyone seems to be keeping a secret and the attitude of Warden (Ted Levine) and Deputy Warden (John Carroll) only adds to the mystery.
As a Category 5 hurricane rolls in, it becomes apparent that no one is going to get off the island anytime soon and doubts begin to arise in Teddy's mind as to whether or not there really was a patient that disappeared or whether he may have been lured to the island under false pretenses. Before long we are immersed in whispers of government experiments being conducted on prisoners in the island's lighthouse, an item straight out of today's headlines where a fully clothed, mutated human body was recently reported washed ashore on Plum Island in Long Island Sound where the U.S. allegedly studies dangerous animal diseases.
Fear is ratcheted up even higher when Daniels reveals a personal agenda of his own that sends the investigation off on a tangent. Unfortunately, the flashbacks, visions, and other visual pyrotechnics pile up, and what began as an intriguing mystery becomes an ordeal of repetitive psychological horror with the screen often filled with tasteless images such as those of dead children and holocaust victims. Though the last fifteen minutes brings a degree of resolution, Shutter Island ultimately wastes the considerable talents of its outstanding cast with an overwrought and overblown production whose premise is neither logical nor believable.