Shutter Island

Aroview: Martin Scorsese’s latest is an intensely atmospheric, if overly confounding psychological thriller, set on a remote island which is home to shadowy mental asylum for the criminally insane.

Fronted by Scorsese’s frequent leading man of late, DiCaprio plays a U.S Marshall investigating the escape of a patient convicted of murdering her children – the least of his worries in a story that takes great liberties in testing the sanity of both its tormented main character and the viewer. Positively schizophrenic in its head-trip of garish hallucinations and paranoid delusions, there’s little concrete here to engage the mystery buff, though as a lavishly shot potboiler dressed in an imposing gothic sensibility, there’s plenty to admire formally with Scorsese’s craftsmanship as a filmmaker showing no signs of aging. Adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane.