Review: Shutter Island

There are some movies where you go and get so immersed in the plot that you forget you're in the theater. Shutter Island is not one of those movies. Indeed, this is the kind of movie where you spend the entire movie trying to soak up every detail, track every plot point, and uncover every hidden motive, all in a fruitless attempt to figure out what is going to happen next.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, you know that there is a plot twist or two down the line. But even knowing that,you're still going to get blindsided when the plot culminates. This is a masterpiece of the mind, playing sleight of hand with your cinematic experience, and operating at least 4 layers under the surface. If you don't like having to think when you go to the movies, this is not your kind of movie.

Even though the trailers make the movie look like some sort of psychological paranormal thriller, the movie falls more into line with psychological experience. The movie is littered with false leads and misleading dialogue making our pathetic attempts to predict what would happen next utterly pointless, and that was one of the things that made the movie so riveting. Though you might guess a plot point here or an action there, for every one time you guess right there are at least 5 things you won't see coming.

Going into this movie, I was pretty unenthused. I figured, this is just another film meant to mess with your head, ending with some twisted outcome that no one sees coming for some obtuse reason. And while it does mess with your head, the turnaround just works. Not works in the sense, "Oh yeah okay, I can see that," but more in the sense of, "Mother of God. THAT'S BRILLIANT!"

There are some movies where after the credits roll, you and your friends hop in the car, and you talk about the movie for about five minutes before changing the subject to where you want to stop for late night burgers. Shutter Island is not one of those movies. We talked about it all the way home, and most of the day today.

If you go and see this movie, you'll have something to talk about at the water cooler the next day, with friends when you're sitting around doing nothing or with all your buddies online. Whether you loved it, hated it, didn't get it, this movie does a great job of starting talk, which is probably why it evolved from a small release into number one at the box office. I'm going to go ahead and give this a 9/10.