Shutter Island

I was morbidly creeped out by Martin Scorsese's latest cinematic offering; a very stagey Gothic film noir thriller set on an inhospitably craggy island that's home to a mental correctional facility in the early 1950s. Leo di C plays a US Marshall, a war vet who has experienced the traumas of the liberation of the death camps in Germany, who is sent to investigate the escape of a patient, but who, in reality, has quite another investigative agenda - one with far reaching, and damaging, national and governmental implications.

Right from the get go the drama is terrifyingly intense; the deep, rumbling score sends reverberating tremors down the spine (even before you know anything whatsoever about the plot), the imposing, grey-green shadowy sweeping vistas as the camera circles the island set the scene for a drama of deeply sinister, suspenseful and disturbing substance - swooping over the unkempt graveyard, electric fences, waves crashing on the glistening black rocks and steely grey walls of the ominous lighthouse. there's almost a deliberate heavy-handedness to the direction - a certain revelling in the setting and stereotypes of the film noir genre - the German psychiatrist who sees to the core of Ted (LdiC), the slightly too charming English professor who heads the correctional programme (Ben Kingsley), the cheeky chappy police partner (Mark Ruffalo), the idealised wife presenting herself in visions to Ted at night (Michelle Williams) and the unhinged inmates running amok.

It all gets interesting (and i promise I'm not giving too much away) when Heller-esque notions of sanity and insanity begin to weasel their way into Ted's investigations. The paranoia and conspiracy theories make it viscerally claustrophobic - and almost unbearably tense to watch, so impatient are you for some clarity. it all comes together brilliantly in the end, and you're left thinking about the film's cunning plotting well after it is over. But as with so many films and books that truly come together in the finale, there's always that niggling fact that the bits which sits slightly uncomfortably are a bit annoying while you are watching them.

still, what the film does do is continually provoke you to unravel the evolving and increasingly complex mystery, which meant it worked for me, certainly.