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'Shutter Island' is an insane thriller

If there are two things in life I am morbidly fascinated with, it's horrors and insane asylums. Martin Scorsese has combined the two: 'Shutter Island' is eerie, foreboding, morbid and brilliant.

I won't buy it on DVD because I've been saving up for a Blu Ray player and DVDs are so 2009, but I'll own it. I will.

It all begins when two US Marshalls - Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) - are headed across murky, stormy seas to the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. They’re investigating the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient who apparently has vanished from a locked room.

Set in 1954, Scorsese's film has an almost imposing Hitchcock feel to it. I can hear the flaps of bird wings in the distance and the sound of someone screaming in a shower.

Once you’re on the island, the only way off is by ferry, which only comes once a day. If it storms, it doesn’t come at all. As Teddy begins to investigate the odd disappearance of Rachel, a woman who drowned her own three kids, tensions run high and secrets begin to surface.

Leonardo Dicaprio is brilliant as the persevering detective who will stop at nothing to uncover what he believes to be dark happenings in the asylum. He's looking for proof that experiments are being performed on patients in inhumane and abominable ways. But, as his investigation deepens, we discover Teddy has his own secrets, which begin to surface in terrifying ways. With visions of his dead wife haunting him, he begins a hopeless war against the asylum.

As the film veers to an end, a massive storm breaks out, and thousands of patients break free from their cells. Teddy, who is determined to put an end to the madness once and for, all escapes from his partner, who he believes is plotting against him.

You’re left sitting, wondering, and realising.

Although not the most original of plots, it still works like a jackhammer, and grips like a vice. Scorsese has managed to create an atmosphere, which thrives on insanity and the unknown. The old school film noir tendencies hit harder than a modern day thriller as they seep into the bones.

I felt the coldness of this movie for days after I left the cinema. Sure to be one of my favourite movies of 2010.