Shutter Island was a novel made by American writer Dennis Lehane in 2003. Being a homage to stories with Gothic settings, B movies and Pulp magazine art, the story of a mental asylum stuck isolated on an island making people question what’s real or not, has a essence that feels like a hybrid between nineteen century literature and classic investigatory and sci-fi movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In 2010, a film version of the story was made directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring a ton of famous actors. The movie was met with generally positive reviews and seemed to be a film that was appreciated stylistically over its substance, as once its viewed with that in mind, this movie is very hard to get into. U.S. marshal, Edward Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) travels to the isolated island mental hospital on Shutter Island with his new partner Chuck (played by Mark Ruffalo) after being called to investigate the disappearance of a patient. The island’s main doctor, Dr Cawley (played by Ben Kingsley) seems to give the two as much information as he keeps from them, and the entire area seems to keep Daniels on edge. The true purpose of his visit is to avenge the death of his wife (played by Michelle Williams) who was killed by a man he believes has been sent here, but this goal becomes extra difficult when questionable things start to unwind around them. Not being able to tell what is real or not and possibly discovering a series of dangerous experiments involving lobotomise, the marshals have to uncover the horrors of Shutter Island before they themselves get deemed ‘’unwell’’. This movie has an air that shows great promise as the content within the actual novel feels like it could create a pretty good movie with plenty of realistic twists, mind-bending reveals, and plenty of visual eye-candy to match the psychotic atmosphere. However, despite the talent featured, the movie never manages to grab its audience, leaving with way too much stuff but no emotions.

The process of the story unfolding upon itself as each new thing is revealed about the location or the past of the main character, things seem to get a little better and a little worst each time. It gets better because the movie does not handle the changes too badly; whenever a reveal is stated, it doesn’t feel completely out of nowhere unless it intentional. The actual meat of the story truly does feel like it could work on that gothic old-fashioned horror/thriller type of narrative where it unravels a complex story with morally grey characters through a constantly shifting plotline. However, the biggest weakness this film has is its lack of emotional connectivity; nothing about the story or the characters makes you care about any of it. The film becomes so much about unwrapping this elaborate mystery that it paid more attention towards that than keeping its audience engaged. It can change direction when it wants, but it happens so quickly and without a reaction that no one is clear on what the end goal is, so its hard to keep invested. Martin Scorsese is a talented director and his niche usually comes through in movies with a more down-to-earth feel, but the tones for the movie seem to keep switching, at least in how the actors are portrayed. They start off feeling pretty goofy and more like cartoon characters, and about halfway through everybody just feels like their breezing through. This does not make them come across as bad, but it never feels fully committed. Weirdly enough, the best part of the movie is the last 20mins. A twist is revealed that not only changes everything that the film felt like it was building towards, but also changes the way the audience interprets previous scenes as well as the final few minutes. Its hard to verify whether the twist actually works as it would take a second viewing, but the clues are laid out fairly well and even if it can be obvious to some, it might not be for casual viewers.

The characters do have the complex ranges of typical cartoon characters, but in some ways this level of simplicity almost makes sense in regard to the final twists. All of the characters are very basic, one-note glorifications of a familiar identity that you would see in this kind of story. Most of the characters on the island do exhibit a very old-fashioned attitude about them through the way they talk, interact and act throughout the movie which adds to the gothic theme that the story was trying to go for from the beginning. The main character has a past that, as the film goes on, becomes a lot more elaborate only to have it be completely changed as it reaches the end, but despite how in depth the movie is going into his past, the audience doesn’t feel anything for his character as he’s written very blandly. The novel most likely got away with this by having the story from his perspective; making him a mold for other people to connect with as oppose to be interesting. A lot of the character’s problems unfortunately come from Leo’s performance. Even if he is not the worst actor out there, he’s easily one of the blandest; any performance he gives can be changed with the other and any other actor can do the exact same thing with far more intrigue involves. Its just a run of the mill Leo performance which is not very interesting to watch and he feels really out of place compared to the other actors, who feel like they at least fit into this style of story. While the other actors like Ruffalo and Kingsley are perfectly fine, they do not leave enough of an impact or have enough memorable scenes (outside of the ending) that are worth remembering.

One of the key elements for making something gothic and creatively creepy is to give it a memorable and distinct atmosphere. This can be done through unique cinematography and angles, through off-beat music or through giving its atmosphere enough key features to have a distinct style. This film tries to have those elements yet feels like it doesn’t know how to correctly use it. The cinematography has a picturesque quality to it where it isn’t always straight-faced and once and a while there’s a nice shot showing off the location, but the island and mental institution is surprisingly boring to look at. The building has very little interesting things to look at so it’s usually a bore to be in and the island has some nice cliffsides and even a cool lighthouse, but the drab, washed out lighting and lack of creative locations stops any of it from feeling creepy or even gothic. The music actually goes an extra step too far in trying to be stand out. The music for the film features a lot of famous classical composer; Gustav Mahler, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, John Cage, Ingram Marshall, and Max Richter. While this style is often utilised to give a scene in a movie a sense of class, sophistication and an old-fashioned atmosphere, its usage is often so over bloated and overly loud that they become a distraction as opposed to useful.

Shutter Island thinks that its smarter than what it actually turned out with on-screen. The funny thing about the movie is that if the pieces were all relatively in the same place, but with added touches like much more engaging acting, a better lead character, more interesting visuals, better music placement and an overall tweak of the story, it may have been able to be something good. Those classic gothic stories and nineteenth-century stories have their place in people’s hearts, and they have led to a lot of creative entertaining movies, but this movie gets so overly-complicated with its twists that it doesn’t have a defined personality or style. It feels like an artsy movie that can be put on to watch as a game to try and guess the twist as opposed to sit down and dissect what it’s actually about. The ending is really the only part worth anything, but if someone watched it, it wouldn’t be horrible, just highly underwhelming and forgettable. Nothing terrible, but nothing to lose your mind over.