And look at who's running it. You don't have to be Scooby-Doo to know that when you find yourself at an insane asylum operated by Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow, your best bet is to excuse yourself.
Or heed the advice of the terrified patient who grabs Ted's notebook and scribbles in it the following: "Run."
The movie's opening section is good horror-movie fun, a chance for director Martin Scorsese to display his craft and transparent, encyclopedic love of horror classics past, to stage an homage-a-thon to Lewton, Kubrick, Hitchcock, etc.
In that spirit, you eagerly settle in and wait for Scorsese to drag you to hell.
"Shutter Island," though, is sometimes just a drag, as likely to leave you exhausted and depressed as gripped by the peculiar exhilaration of a well-judged horror movie.
Scorsese's ripping-good opener slows to a near halt in a ponderous, gruesome midsection that delves into Daniels' personal demons, illustrated by flashbacks that check the movie's momentum and confuse its tone.
We learn, for instance, that Daniels is a World War II combat vet who in the course of his service liberated Dachau, and we are "treated" to Daniels' horrid nightmares - the frozen dead, eyes and mouths open, reaching toward us with their icy fingers.
One minute, Scorsese is flipping through the horror catalog, building a movie within a world of movies, parading DiCaprio and his fedora in front of cheesy blue-screen backdrop and feeding him arch, '50s-style dialogue.
The next, he's quoting from "The Sorrow and the Pity" and using (misusing?) images that do not fit so easily into his postmodern house of horrors.
Scorsese also shows a particular attraction to the image of murdered children, following the lead of contemporary horror hacks. As the mainstream-movie shock line moves past women and teens, it encircles children, and it's a bit of a shame to watch Scorsese go in that lamentable direction.
