Grade: B    

What’s It About?
A US Marshall investigates a missing persons case in an isolated hospital for the criminally insane, where he uncovers a conspiracy.

Whats Its Bechdel Test Score?
1/3. Failure.

What About Minorities?
It’s as white a movie as the next one.

What the hell did I just watch?

Don’t get me wrong. Shutter Island is really, really good. The acting is phenomenal – Leonardo DiCaprio and Sir Ben Kingsley in particular are being as fantastic as usual. The story is really compelling and fascinating, to the point that I kept putting off going to the bathroom because I didn’t want to miss what was coming next. I had to pee for an hour, but it was worth it.

However, this movie is kind of like a really horrible acid trip. Obviously that’s what Scorsese was going for, so, well played. This movie totally fried my brain. There is one main twist that is fairly predictable, but the way its handled and all the stuff around it totally has me questioning the outcome and trying to figure out what really happened. It’s the kind of movie you have to watch again to figure it out – unless, I suppose, you just want to accept the easy explanation, which I am totally skeptical about.

Unfortunately, it’s a horrible acid trip I really never want to relive. The score was completely over the top and really stressed me out. I was really digging some of the cinematography – it was trippy in really subtle ways that had be questioning whether things were real or imaginary – but at other times it was a bit obvious and gimmicky.

I would certainly recommend it, though. This kind of movie is what filmmaking is about. It’s a very brave effort, although Scorsese isn’t exactly a greenhorn at making “brave” movies, and a few people in the audience did walk out. I think that’s more of a positive note for the film than a negative however – it’s a real experience, and not everybody is going to be able to hack it. I really want to check out the book now, too.