I saw Shutter Island recently at the theatres. I had been waiting a while for it to come out. Sometime in the summer, they released a theatrical trailer for it, and having just been on somewhat of a Scorsese kick seeing The Departed for the first time, I thought it’d be a perfect opportunity to see something else that I could enjoy. It was suppose to come out before Hallowe’en and due to scheduling reasons (my guess is it knew it’d be unable to compete against Avatar for any awards and decided to opt for a 2010 release date instead) it was pushed to February. 

So after much waiting and tons of projects on the go, I finally saw it - and it was good.

It wasn’t fantastic by any means, it was very much a straight-to-the-point thriller which reminded me of a lot of classic films I have watched in the past. It was just a little bit too long. I have this rule where I don’t generally enjoy seeing films in theatres unless it’s a matinee (reduces the risk of jerks being in the theatre being loud and obnoxious), but since Meg has been working full time in Toronto and since the new Silvercity that opened up in the Heritage Greene plaza closest to home only does night time shows until the summer comes I had no other choice. 

I knew this film wasn’t going to be a horror film, well, I should say I assumed it wasn’t going to be regardless of the trailers that set it up to be one. I don’t think that anyone else really thought that though, as the theatre was packed (fourth week in) with people who I guess were hoping to be terrified. The plot chugs along at a decent rate, but ever since I first saw the trailer I correctly guessed the “twist” ending. It’s a bit of a shame when you’re waiting two hours for confirmation that you’re right, but it was enjoyable. 

There were a lot of great scenes in the film as well. Scorsese really took liberty with the whole psychological aspect of the thriller and played around with some scenes that used really interesting editing techniques. 

Overall, although a tad too long (2:28) it was still a really decent flick despite being fairly typical (think “Memento” meets PS2’s “The Suffering”) at least for a film student. I really dug it though, but for those who still need to see it - remember that a thriller doesn’t necessarily mean horror and please don’t talk during the film.