Shutter Island

Laura and I went out to see Shutter Island over the weekend - the new Leonardo DiCaprio movie about the 1950s insane asylum. We had high expectations for this movie when we saw the first trailer. Both of us like horror movies, preferably of the psychological bend. The time period was pretty spot on, but the music choice was horrible. Far too distracting. I was hoping for something eerie like Book of Eli, but it ended up being this jarring fog-horn-type loud music. I really didn't get it.

Overall, I'd give the movie a solid B. The plot was engaging early on, but rapidly became difficult to believe and easy to predict. Laura and I had figured out about 1/2 of the twists before the movie was two-thirds done. I give it the high grade less for the story, though, and more for the acting (Leo did drifting into insanity pretty well, Mark Ruffalo surprised me with his understated partner, and Ben Kingsley was perfectly subtle as his psychologist), the look and feel of the movie (it really captured the time period and feeling of a dangerous psych ward perfectly), and the awesome monolauges and diolauges about the human mind that played throughout the movie. If you like psychological thrillers, this is worth a look. Just don't expect to be over-surprised by the plot.