I’m a big fan of the psychological thriller genre, which in my opinion is the most under-used in film, television and writing today.  (Even I’ve tried to write a psychological thriller novel.)  But that’s why it was so cool to flip on the Syfy channel tonight and see Shutter Island.

Shutter Island is about Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo who play State Marshalls in 1954, and they go to a mental institution to help find a missing and dangerous patient.  Only that’s not really what it’s about.  This movie has layers, upon layers, upon layers.  It’s a really deep movie that has countless themes.  It’s one of those movies I feel like they’d show in a Film Class.

I will talk about the plot a little more, but don’t worry no spoilers on anything in the movie.  The characters in this movie, DiCaprio’s in particular, are extremely dense.  DiCaprio has PTSD or something from World War II, which adds a lot of darkness to his character and the movie.  He has flashbacks in dream form to the war and to when he was with his wife, and they’re all very dark and even disturbing at some points, which add those layers to the film.  Ben Kingsley is the other standout here and he plays the doctor who has his own agenda.  But really all the actors in this movie are great, even if they just have a line or two.  Then the premise as I said has many themes to it, and isn’t only a psychological thriller, but has fantastic conspiracy elements.  The only part of the plot I didn’t like was the ending.  As I said, this review is spoiler-free, so I won’t spoil anything, but if you’ve seen the trailer to this movie, you already know the ending.  It’s a twist ending, and you will know what it is from the trailer.  So don’t watch the trailer, and just watch the movie.  But the actual twist is even kind of set up for in the movie.  So a film that is so creative and so original in its set-up, it just becomes predictable in the last half hour or 45 minutes, and that’s kind of a bummer…

And the only other weird thing in movie is the directing.  Martin Scorsese directed this movie, and you’d never know it.  This doesn’t really feel like a Scorsese movie.  It almost feels like Ben Affleck directed it, or really any director with more than 2 credits on IMDB could have done it.  Scorsese did a great job, don’t get me wrong, it just didn’t have his Scorsese-isms.

So a very dense that layered movie with a script that is fantastic despite a few predictabilities, great acting, a great mood and setting in the movie, really solid directing.  I take replay value into account, and it’s a movie that you want to watch again.  I’m going to give Shutter Island a 4/5.  And it makes me want to give my psychological thriller another try.

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So guys those are my thoughts on Shutter Island.  What are your thoughts on it and what’s the best twist ending ever?  Whatever those thoughts are and whatever those answers may be, let me know down below, and as always, thanks for reading guys.