Shutter Island

With Shutter Island, his fourth collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, iconic director Martin Scorsese treads down some decidedly dark corridors, delving into a genre tale in a way that he hasn't since his gritty remake of Cape Fear. However, where Fear offered up thrills, this film, based on the Dennis Lehane novel, presents dread and discontent, as DiCaprio's lawman, U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels, confronts the strange happenings on an isolated mental hospital for the criminally insane miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Fully indulging in the movie's 1954 setting and its bleak island locale, Scorsese dives head first into vintage pulpiness, reveling in the mood and mystery so much that you can almost imagine the legendary filmmaker enthusing about a scene from behind the camera. What really separates Shutter Island from other Scorsese productions, however, is that it gets weird, and while this may seem a poor fit at first, it ultimately works in the movie's favor, much in the way that the surreal moments do in Hitchcock's Vertigo. (This is no coincidence--Hitchcock's influence lurks all around Shutter Island.) Aided by a top-notch supporting cast--Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley, among them--Scorsese and DiCaprio expertly guide the audience towards the shadows, and viewers may be surprised at what they discover when they emerge back into the light.