Not sneaky enough

Rating: 8/10 (6 September 2010)

I realized after that Shutter Island is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote the stories behind the good Gone Baby Gone and the great Mystic River. All three movies definitely have parallels in terms of darkness and... film noir-ness.
From the trailer, I was expecting Shutter Island to be a supernatural thriller but I wasn't disappointed that it wasn't because it's still a very effective and engaging thriller. Scorsese set up the ambiance well, though sometimes the score felt overhanded and heavy. The story - an involved mystery - is interesting and twisty, but for all its sneakiness, the Big Reveal doesn't come as a huge surprise and afterwards, I didn't have that feeling of "Omg, I have to watch the movie over again to see what hints I missed" as I did with The Sixth Sense. And while the cast was good, there weren't any standouts as with Lehane's other two book-movies.