Shutter Island

Editorial

Shutter Island, from the novel by Dennis Lehane, is the nearest thing to a horror film Martin Scorsese has made since Cape Fear. Its story, of a criminal investigation which turns in on itself as the detective starts suffering from contradictory flashbacks and drug-induced hallucinations, is footnoted by favourite moments from the Val Lewton school of fright.

A walk through a dark corridor of cages, as insane arms clutch at the protagonist, restages a classic shock scene from Mark Robson's Bedlam, which Scorsese once thought of remaking, while a disturbingly unsafe spiral staircase is a dead ringer for the one in Robert Wise's The Haunting. 

Though the marshals played by DiCaprio and Ruffalo sport film noir hats and tough guy attitudes, they surrender their guns to enter an insane asylum which is also a haunted castle. There they are plunged into a full-on gothic melodrama which includes a creepy turn from genre fixture Max von Sydow as the sort of shrink who reminds the hero of his bad experiences with Nazis, an Agatha Christie-style locked room mystery, a sinister lighthouse which doubtless harbours dreadful secrets and a thunderstorm out of The Old Dark House or King Lear.

Officially the best filmmaker in the world, Scorsese enjoys himself here in a way he hasn't since Cape Fear: there is depth to the story, but not quite enough to sustain all the mysterioso effects.  Lehane's novel has one of those tricky plots which keeps pulling the rug out from under hero (and the reader) — it would even count as a spoiler to give away which parts Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer and Jackie Earle Haley play, and there are several everything-you-assume-is-wrong moments set up by some scrupulously fair clue-dropping.

Kim Newman