Shutter Island is a damn fine thriller that’s smartly written, incredibly acted, and masterfully directed. There’s intrigue from the second the film starts that doesn’t stop until moments before the closing credits. In the hands of someone like M. Night Shyamalan, this movie would have really sucked, but Martin Scorsese’s eye for art and decades of masterful experience make the movie a spooky suspenseful gem.

The story set in 1953 has a great hook. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a US Marshal named Teddy Daniels who (with his partner Chuck played by Mark Ruffalo) visit an island sanitarium that serves as an Alcatraz for the criminally insane. He’s investigating a patient that seemingly disappeared into thin air, and encounters a staff full of curious and secretive people like the enigmatic Dr. John Cawley, played with creepy restraint by Sir Ben Kingsley. A storm knocks out the ferry service and keeps the two investigators on the island longer than they planned. Along the way, Daniel’s becomes increasingly spooked by the mysteries he uncovers, and his own haunted flashbacks of a horrific time as a US soldier at the Dachau Death Camp, and his wife’s unfortunate demise.

There’s a sequence with a gale force storm on the island that is simply amazing to be immersed in. Though I’m unaware of what sort of effects and trickery were used to pull it off (it could have been all CGI for all I know), it looks as if it’s the real deal. You can almost feel the leaves and cold wind blasting against your face. I haven’t felt such an eerie atmospheric scene in a movie since I watched Jem and Scout walk home at night in To Kill A Mockingbird.

The I especially enjoyed the soundtrack, which I mistook as an original score, but learned later it’s a collection of excellent modern classical pieces collected by Robbie Robertson.

The less you know about the film at this point, the better. Don’t read anything about it or let people tell you much about the story. There’s twists and turns along the way that are worth discovering on your own.

When the film was over, the audience was subdued, but I could hear the murmurs from folks about how good it was. It’s a heavy movie that’s certainly not a date film, and contains some powerfully depressing scenes that will likely hang on you for some time after you see it. But Scorsese is an artist and doesn’t waste his time on throwaway garbage.