Shutter Island (Phillip Road Wivenhoe)


In 1954, in the midst of the Cold War, U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels and his new colleague Chuck Aule are assigned to find a missing woman named Rachel Solando who was a live-in patient at a psychiatric clinic. The woman is a multiple murderer, and the clinic – Ashecliffe Hospital – is an impenetrable penal institution located on an isle off the coast near Boston known as Shutter Island. How could she disappear from her cell without a trace?

Their investigations don’t exactly get off to a good start. Daniels’ wife has recently died in a fire in their apartment and her husband has been struggling to get a grip on things ever since. The bad weather they encounter as they make the crossing to the island looks as if it’s going to turn into a hurricane, Daniels is seasick, and their first interview with Dr John Cawley is fruitless: Daniels and his partner are confronted by a wall of silence.

The desolate, windswept isle is pervaded by a strange atmosphere, full of odd happenings and secrets. When the hurricane hits, the two policemen find themselves cut off from the mainland. With only the vaguest of leads pointing towards a dark conspiracy involving medical experiments and secret departments, they continue their investigations, in ominous isolation, surrounded by dangerous inmates and no less dubious doctors. (MUBI)

USA/Martin Scorcese/2010/138 mins/Cert 15

7.30pm Sat 8th January