Martin Scorsese's latest experiment with genre film is a dark, gasping production full of art and vision. He makes it clear that he is a genre outsider in all the right ways, eschewing tired and aversive horror conventions, and he fully demonstrates his skill at making a story his own. By taking a fresh road into familiar thematic territory, Marty creates a film that succeeds in far more ways than it fails.
Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshal, travels by boat to Shutter Island, an isolated penitentiary for the criminally insane. He and his partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), are assigned with tracking down an escaped inmate, whose disappearance is completely inexplicable. They begin their investigation under the threat of an oncoming storm, which eventually traps them on the island with the dangerous prison population, and the staff, and each other. The stressful surroundings seem to spark some psychological backlashes for Teddy himself, who starts to struggle with traumatic memories and hidden motivations.
Aside from the intimidating surroundings and bad weather, Teddy and Chuck discover a maze of other complications: a staff that seems uncooperative, inmates who seem to know more than they should, and a web of inconsistencies that threaten to derail their investigation. Teddy's mission gradually leads him to a crisis of trust and conviction, and to a confrontation with inner demons that he himself has brought to Shutter Island.
First and foremost, Shutter Island is brilliantly crafted. Scorsese's mastery is on constant display, in the visuals, the sounds and scoring, the pacing, and the drama. His color palettes are calculated and effective: the overcast grays of the island, the lurid and unnatural hues of hallucination, and the frigid blue-gray of memory. He editing and camerawork are deft, and he reinforces his unhinged atmosphere with occasional tricks of the frame: jump cuts, a freeze-frame, and quick flashes of repeated imagery. It's among his most stylized work, but its perfect purposiveness keeps it from becoming gimmicky.
The score and sound editing deserves considerable credit for this success, as it's one of the most important parts of Shutter Island, which leans heavily on suspense and atmospherics. The score is a relentless, heavy-footstep, slow-building accompaniment to the film's ominous sets, and the sound effects can be alarming and disquieting. This approach is vastly preferable to "sudden cheap scare" tactics, which are present here and there, but never frequent enough to become lame and exhausting.
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