Thought I'd move this discussion into the review section now.

Basically, the movie just ended up being OK for me.  The visuals in it are quite amazing though, particularly the dream sequences.  They were not only aesthetically pleasing but really helped establish a great atmosphere for the film.

That being said, I didn't find the mystery all that engaging, the film ran way too long (to the point of annoyance), and the ending basically ruined the rest of the film for me.  I don't want to give away spoilers or anything, so once people see it we can discuss it more.

In summation, it's a little disappointing to know Scorsese (one of my favorite directors) helmed this pretty mediocre effort.

I generally like to let movies germanate a bit before making my final decision, but I was able to catch this today, and I guess I would have to agree with Dressel's take above.  I think, despite the beatuiful dream sequences, this is probably going to fall flat for some.  For me, it was a decent movie, but not great.  

In the end, I think this is probably going to be one of those movies that might suffer from expectations.  I know that when I saw the trailer a few months ago, that it was one of only a few movies that I was really, really looking forward to seeing.  

Again, I don't think that you will feel ripped off, but at the same time I would caution to temper the expectations.

Should you see it?  Probably.  Is it a must see, rush to the theatre?  Probably not.

It's actually quite infuriating if you go back and watch the movie again knowing what you find out in the end.

Just saw this today.  I was very disappointed.  Only thing that worked at all for me, was the end and the revelations.

For me, it was visually a very ugly movie.  Also, very slow and downright dull.  WAY too many flashbacks and dream sequences, IMO.

I thought the acting was very well done.

SPOILERS     SPOILERS     SPOILERS     SPOILERS

I was pretty sure very early on that things weren't as they were made out to be, and I was correct about 1 main character not playing for the side he seemed to be on.  I did not guess the real twist at all, though, and because of that, the end did work, but overall, I was very let down.

This is not the movie you expect, based on the trailers.  And as Dressel said, there is zero replay value, unless you want to watch it in a different light, knowing what the real deal is.  I for one, have absolutely no interest in that, though.

I think it will go downhill quickly now that the secret is out.

Don't wanna say too much cause I'm writing a full review for my site, but I'll say I liked it. I thought it was very interesting and kinda creepy. I knew the twist after watching the trailer, but the story was so well told that I was happy to stay along for the ride.

~Zack~

I thought it could have been a little shorter, but on the whole it was great.

My only issue with twist at the end films is that once you've seen it you don't really want to see it again. Great movies to me, are the ones that you can watch 50 or so times and they are just as good every time.

I don't think there is a twist in Shutter Island.  

To me, the very first scene explains what's going on, albeit subtly.  If that didn't do it for you, the truth is explicitly stated by several people throughout the movie.  The flashbacks make no pretense about not feeding directly into that truth.

It's just a simple story about a man coming to terms with himself; not the mystery it was marketed as, to be sure, but that didn't affect my viewing enjoyment too much.  I feel like people get caught up in the "twist" and don't focus on what can be learned from being introduced to Leo's character, his world, and his story.

Quoted from Heretic I don't think there is a twist in Shutter Island.   To me, the very first scene explains what's going on, albeit subtly.  If that didn't do it for you, the truth is explicitly stated by several people throughout the movie.  The flashbacks make no pretense about not feeding directly into that truth.

I'm just easy to trick. :)

Quoted from Grandma Bear I'm just easy to trick. :)

Careful...

I enjoyed this, although the ending was something of an anti-climax.

I agree with Heretic that there wasn't a twist, you were told throughout the film what was going on and the directorial style gave it away within seconds.

The default position on an insanity story is that the main character is insane...just as in a ghost story the default is that the person you think is alive is actually dead.

The atmosphere was outstanding and the way the director played with continuity worked brilliantly. Great angles and visually very interesting.

Really feel that it needed some more twists and turns though..

Still excellent, just a little obvious.

I typically have mixed feelings when Scorsese treads thriller water.
Cape Fear. Bringing out the Dead. Shutter Island is no exception.
I am a born and bred New Englander, so I'm a tad partial to Dennis Lehane's books.
I have a soft spot for Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone as well. =p
I like seeing movies that were shot in my old stomping grounds.

**SPOILERS**

I have my own opinion about the "twist."
I completely disagree that there is no turn on the audience at the end.
The twist is not DiCaprio's identity, its the decision he makes when faced with reality.
He fools the doctor into believing one thing when the opposite is the truth.
The question he poses about monsters and their self awareness is a good moment.
That's the "twist" that got me, I knew basically what Leo was five minutes in.
I'm grateful that Scorsese did not try to obfuscate it with cheap trickery.

That being said, the third act is a big pill to swallow.
In the novel, it takes forty plus pages to explain the climax.
Scorsese did his best with the buckets of exposition, but it still feels stiff to me.
I hate getting force fed exposition in the middle of the climax. Bleh.

Overall, a visual feast, interesting themes, great score and go New England!

E.D.

Thought this was okay. More or less what I was expecting. Visually speaking, it's one of Scorsese's best and while it was kind of low key in terms of suspense, the atmosphere was very lush and palpable. I didn't care for the characters though. They were all very cut and dry. DiCaprio's acting felt stiff compared to The Aviator, Gangs of New York or Inception although I thought it was better than The Departed. The rest of the actors just felt dull. It wasn't there fault though. The script wasn't bad by any means but I don't think the characters were very demanding. I think Kingsly, in particular, brought as much to his role as he could have.

An exception would be Ted Levine. He really shined in that one brief scene he had which more or less sums up the whole movie.

The story was so-so. I think all the pieces were there but I felt it was actually pretty uneventful. Maybe a little too "classic" for it's own good. At the same time, I think too many twists and "boo" moments would've buried it. In any case, I don't think Scorsese, as brilliant and virtuosic as he is, doesn't have the chops or even the interest, for that matter, to take on what's basically a psychological thriller. I just don't think it suits him.

In any case, I don't think it reflects badly on Scorsese in anyway. I wouldn't call it a misstep. I'm glad he gave the genre a shot. It just wasn't anything fantastic.

I was not a member here during these reviews, and as I really liked this movie, I looked this thread up.

I thought it was a great story and film. Later, a friend had the book lying around, so I gave it a quick read. I don't usually like to do that, but I can say the book and the movie are almost exactly the same.

Rick is correct that one starts out wondering if he was really a patient here. But I think there were numerous red herrings which kept you wondering if it was something else, especially with the Nazi stuff.

I do agree that the trailers were misleading. I was expecting something more supernatural horror and suspense. What you get is something that hints at supernatural, though in the end isn't, and works more like a mystery where your trying to figure out what's going on. If you're really hooked on tension based movies, you were understandably disappointed. But if you happen to be tired of movies with nonsense plots, maybe you liked this, as I did.

As far as the twist, it ends up being what you suspected it might be at the start, but were led to doubt along the way. When it comes you certainly are not really surprised by it. But the choice the Decaprio character faces keeps things fresh, interesting, and emotionally compelling. The idea that your mind creates an alternate reality to escape from some terrible truth is always interesting. What was unique was how the doctors penetrate this alternate world he has constructed, get through to him, but never completely. They get through just enough to present him with a choice. He's kind of giving birth to himself. He has the choice of proceeding into the world we know as reality, or retreating. In a shifting world governed by subconscious creative currents, he makes the conscious choice to retreat.

It worked for me anyway.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

I think the choice at the end was very interesting, but very under-played. It's kind of a film in itself. I just felt underwhelmed by it, when I felt like I should really be hit hard by the fact he was choosing to die a hero, rather than live as a monster.

The mystery was fun, but just too obvious...you even had people telling him straight out that "it was you that did this to me". It didn't leave much room for doubt.

That being said, friends of mine who are obviously less film literate, didn't see it coming at all, so the film must have been very powerful for them. It's a hard line to walk, I suppose...foreshadowing something without giving it away. I got it from the very first shot...the great directors almost always tell the entire film with the first shot...look out for that in future. You won't be able to tell what the whole story is without seeing it, but once you have, you can see that it was there all along.

EDIT: Found a good blog on this subject, well worth a read.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/opening_shots_project/

Good film, no doubt. Not one I have a desire to re-visit at any point though, which is usually the test of how good something really is for me.

This discussion actually brings up an interesting point for writing a script. It's going to take something very different to trick an astute observer like Rick than it is for the general audience. So it's possible that if you write something clever enough to impress the experts you might actually lose much of the audience. So what should one shoot for?



I think in Shutter it starts to become clear what is happening when he is told "you did this to me." Before that there was room for speculation on other possibilities, and this was past the mid point I think. But even with this strong clue, I would guess the general audience did not pick it up, and even if it did, people were certainly not sure.

I think it was clever to start the movie/book on a boat too. To start it on the island would have been more of a giveaway.

The feature I just finished has the same issue. There are a series of twists. These twists will more or less be anticipated by the savvy film veteran. There are things I can do to twist it in a way few will anticipate, but it might make it too cryptic. So I am leaning toward aiming for the general audience, and leaving some deeper stuff for the more intelligent viewer to sink their teeth into, but stuff that does not slow the film or confuse the general audience.

Doubt you'd lose anyone with a twist that would get me. I couldn't work out what the twist was going to be in something like U-Turn, but it wasn't a hard film to follow...it just had many twists.

Some of the problems you have with films are the expectations created by marketing...I was expecting a twist therefore I was analysing it from the word go....the trailer showed Di Caprio going to a lunatic asylum and going mad. If I'd just watched it without seeing that, who knows what I would have thought?

Ok, well I'll see if I can get ya then. Will be posting next week. No obligation to read on your part, but if you do, we'll see if a got the twist by you.

Watched this again despite saying that I had no inclination to.

Must say it has surprising replay value...I actually appreciated the story more when I wasn't following the twist.

The conflict with the different schools of psychiatry and his internal conflict were very strong. Ben Kingsley is fantastic.

Better than I gave it credit for.

Would definitley recommend people watch it twice.

Disagree, Rick.  I watched it twice and the 2nd time was even worse for me than the first, as I expected it would be.

I thought Ben Kingsley was rather weak here.  I really didn't buy much about his performance.  For me, he's either hit or miss in a role, and this was a miss...

I thought it was perfect. He played the role of the caring doctor whilst still being seemingly part of a creepy conspiracy pitch perfectly.

I think what put me off the first time round was the feeling of disappointment that it wasn't real..it was sort of an anti-climax.

Watching it again, it was a much more complete film than I at first realised.

Excellent film and destined to be one of Mart's neglected babies. Doesn't detract from its beauty at all.

Let's be honest. Horror isn't Scorsese' genre. I liked Cape Fear but that's because it was solid thriller elevated by Robert De Niro's performance. Shutter Island was horrible.
I felt at some points Scorsese was drowning his film in atmosphere and absurdly oppressive music cues.  

Totally agree!  I wouldn't call it horrible, but it definitely wasn't good or great, and the biggest problem was the false advertising that it was horror.

WEAK!

In sci fi and horror, movies where we are unsure of whether something is a dream or not are common. What was different about this, however, was the blending of the two. You can't accuse this of having the "it was all a dream" plot. Decaprio's character's mind is creating an alternate reality, as a self defense mechanism, but it is not just using old memories as substance for this. It is blending pieces of reality into the mix. To add to that, the psychologists are taking advantage of this alternate reality and trying to use it to reach the patient for his own benefit. That's pretty unique.

The twist did not fool Rick. But I guarantee it fooled 95% of the audiences in the theater. I think the intelligent viewer suspected about half way what was going on, at least in part, but by then they did a good job of grabbing you into the movie, and you were still not sure, and were wondering about the details of it.

I think it was easy to feel for DeCaprio's character too. He was perhaps guilty of unintentionally neglecting his wife. When she became ill, he could not face that himself, so he blocked it from his mind, turned to drinking. Very understandable.

You also had the WW 2 memories and how that was used to try to mislead the viewer as to what might be going on, but it also played critically into the theme that even good people, under terrible circumstances, will do terrible things. In the camps they murdered the Nazi guards. In his life, he murdered his wife. Both actions were understandable. Both were the kind of things that will create tremendous guilt, the kind that's difficult to live with.

You had the aspect of competing psychological therapies. The film was beautifully shot.

I almost get the feeling that if some producer had jumped in at the last second, changed the script to where some random people had their throats slit; and some kind of evil creature appeared out of nowhere and without explanation, but which ate someone; then the movie would make little sense, but horror people would love it. Said with all due respect horror people!!

;D ;D ;D

I didn't hate it at all.  I just felt rooked based on the trailers.

I thought it was slow and dull much of the long run time, and although the payoff/twist/reveal was the best part of the movie, and did surprise me, it didn't redeem the movie overall, IMO.

2nd viewing was much worse cause there was no surprise at the end.

Bring on some flesh eating creatures for no reason and let them eat some people!!  YES!!!   8) 8)

It did get slow about 3/4 through. It reached that dreaded point when you say, ok, finish this thing!

And the trailers did create a different expectation, though I'm not sure if that could have been avoided.

Now head out and get some flesh to eat tonight Jeff!

The atmosphere he created is a demo of how talented he is. That omnipotent feeling of fear he injected into the film was incredible to absorb and definitely to the film's advantage.