Shutter Island is a 2010 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese. The screenplay was adapted by Laeta Kalogridis from the 2003 novel by Dennis Lehane. It follows Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his partner Chuck, who come to the fictional Shutter Island in Boston Harbor to investigate its criminal psychiatric facility after one of its patients goes missing; Daniels has his own ulterior motives for taking the case. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, with Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow and Michelle Williams in supporting roles.
Development began when Phoenix Pictures acquired the film rights to the novel directly from Lehane after Columbia Pictures had allowed their rights to lapse in 2003. Phoenix hired Laeta Kalogridis to work on a screenplay for a year, and in 2007, announced that both Scorsese and DiCaprio had joined the project. Production began on March 6, 2008, at various locations in Massachusetts; filming ended on July 2, 2008.
Partnering with Paramount Pictures, the film's wide release was on February 19, 2010, and received generally positive reviews from critics. It was ranked by the National Board of Review in their top ten films of 2010, and grossed $295 million worldwide. The film is also noted for its soundtrack, which prominently featured classical music by composers such as Gustav Mahler, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, John Cage, Ingram Marshall and Max Richter. In 2025, the film was voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century", finishing at number 169.
Plot
In 1954, U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island in Boston Harbor. They are investigating the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient of the hospital who had killed her three children by drowning.
The staff, led by psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley and his colleague Dr. Jerimiah Naehring, appear uncooperative. The marshals learn that Dr. Lester Sheehan, who was treating Solando, left the island on vacation immediately after Solando disappeared. Teddy experiences migraines and flashbacks of his time as a U.S. soldier in the liberation of Dachau, as well as vivid dreams of his wife Dolores, who was killed in a fire in their building set by pyromaniac Andrew Laeddis. Teddy tells Chuck he took this case to find Laeddis, who he believes is a patient. Solando suddenly resurfaces, but believes Teddy is her husband.
Teddy breaks into the restricted Ward C to find Laeddis, but meets patient George Noyce, who acts as if he knows Teddy. Noyce says the doctors experiment on patients and lobotomize them in the lighthouse. He warns Teddy that everyone will deceive him and not to trust his partner Chuck.
Teddy and Chuck climb the cliffs toward the lighthouse but are separated. Believing he saw Chuck's body on the rocks below, Teddy climbs down but finds a cave where a woman claiming to be the real Rachel Solando is hiding. She reveals she is a former psychiatrist who discovered clandestine experiments on mind control at the facility, and was forcibly committed to silence her. She warns that Cawley and Naehring will use Teddy's war trauma to feign a psychotic break, so they can have him committed. Teddy returns to the hospital. When he asks about Chuck, Cawley insists that Teddy arrived at Shutter Island alone.
Convinced that Chuck has been taken to the lighthouse, Teddy is intercepted by Naehring, who attempts to sedate him. Teddy overpowers him and breaks into the lighthouse to find Cawley waiting for him. Cawley tells him that Rachel Solando never existed and that Teddy has not been drugged but is experiencing withdrawal from chlorpromazine, a neuroleptic medication he has taken for the past two years.
Chuck arrives and reveals that he is Dr. Sheehan. Cawley reveals that "Teddy" is really Andrew Laeddis, a former U.S. Marshal incarcerated at Ashecliffe for killing his manic depressive wife Dolores Chanal after she drowned their three children. Andrew failed to seek treatment for Dolores when she burned down their apartment. He instead moved his family to a lakehouse where Dolores carried out the killings. As a result of his guilt, Andrew became delusional and created the alternate persona of Edward Daniels. The "investigation" of Rachel Solando was an elaborate roleplay, supported by hospital staff, to help Andrew play out his delusion so he might break out of it and return to reality. Overwhelmed, Andrew faints.
Awakening, Andrew recounts the truth, satisfying the doctors that he is lucid. Cawley notes they had achieved this state nine months ago but had quickly regressed. He warns that this will be Andrew's last chance, and if he lapses again, he will be lobotomized due to his violent conduct toward the guards and other patients, such as Noyce.
Some time later, Andrew relaxes on the hospital grounds with Sheehan. Appearing delusional, he calls Sheehan "Chuck", and says they must leave the island. Sheehan signals to a watching Cawley, who orders the lobotomy. Andrew asks Sheehan if it would be worse "to live as a monster or to die as a good man". A stunned Sheehan calls Andrew "Teddy", but the latter does not respond and leaves peacefully with the orderlies for his operation.
Cast
Leonardo DiCaprio as Edward "Teddy" Daniels / Andrew Laeddis, a former U.S. Marshal who investigates the Shutter Island insane asylum Mark Ruffalo as Chuck Aule / Dr. Lester Sheehan, Teddy's primary psychiatrist doubling as his Marshal partner Ben Kingsley as Dr. John Cawley, a senior psychiatrist at Shutter Island Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring, a colleague of Cawley Michelle Williams as Dolores Chanal, Teddy's manic-depressive wife Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson as Rachel Solando: Mortimer portrays the version presented by Cawley as the one who escaped Shutter Island, later revealed to be a nurse in disguise Clarkson portrays the version met by Teddy in a cave who affirms his conspiracies, later revealed to be a hallucination Jackie Earle Haley as George Noyce, a patient in Ward C Ted Levine as Warden John Carroll Lynch as Deputy Warden McPherson Joseph Sikora as Glen Miga Elias Koteas as Laeddis Robin Bartlett as Bridget Kearns Christopher Denham as Peter Breene Curtiss Cook as Trey Washington
Production Development The rights to Dennis Lehane's novel Shutter Island were first optioned to Columbia Pictures in 2003. Columbia did not act on the option, and it lapsed back to Lehane, who sold it to Phoenix Pictures. Phoenix hired Laeta Kalogridis, and together, they developed the film for a year. Director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio were both attracted to the project. Production began on March 6, 2008.
Lehane's inspiration for the hospital and island setting was Long Island in Boston Harbor, which he had visited as a child with his uncle and family during the blizzard of 1978.
Filming Shutter Island was mainly filmed in Massachusetts, with Taunton being the location for the World War II flashback scenes. Old industrial buildings in Taunton's Whittenton Mills Complex replicated the Dachau concentration camp. The old Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts, was another key location.
Cawley's office scenes were the second floor of the chapel during the late evening. Lights were shone through the windows to make it appear to be daytime. The crew painted the hospital's brick walls to look like plywood. This served the dual purpose of acting as scenery and blocking the set from view of a local road.
The crew wanted to film at the old Worcester State Hospital, but demolition of surrounding buildings made it impossible. The stone lodge next to Leach Pond at Borderland State Park in Easton, Massachusetts, was used for the cabin scene. The film used Peddocks Island as a setting for the story's island. East Point, in Nahant, Massachusetts, was the location for the lighthouse scenes. The scenes in which Teddy and Chuck are caught in the hurricane were filmed at the Wilson Mountain Reservation in Dedham, Massachusetts. Filming ended on July 2, 2008.
Music
The film does not have an original score. Instead, Scorsese's longtime collaborator Robbie Robertson created an ensemble of previously recorded material to use in the film. Shutter Island: Music from the Motion Picture was released on February 2, 2010, by Rhino Records.
According to a statement on Paramount's website: "The collection of modern classical music [on the soundtrack album] was hand-selected by Robertson, who is proud of its scope and sound. 'This may be the most outrageous and beautiful soundtrack I've ever heard.' [Robertson stated]."
Los Angeles Times' classical music reviewer Mark Swed noted that "Robertson went through a lot of trouble to make things work as well". He argues that while other reviewers have called the music "melodramatic", "nothing could be further from the truth".
Another reviewer noted that "Scorsese has abandoned his oft-used classic rock soundtrack habits and, almost positively taking a queue from Stanley Kubrick's soundtracks, adopted a selection mostly of various modern classical pieces", and that "this set of pieces certainly suggests a different mood rather than a conventional score".
Pop culture critic Noel Murray lists the album at #24 in Vulture's 2018 "40 Greatest Movie Soundtracks of All Time", saying, "Besides drawing attention to the modern geniuses of a wholly different genre, the unfamiliar, almost alien sounds of the Shutter Island soundtrack reinforce the movie's tale of hallucinatory madness".
A full track listing of the album is below. All the musical works are featured in the final film.
Disc 1 "Fog Tropes" (Ingram Marshall) – "Symphony No. 3: Passacaglia – Allegro Moderato" (Krzysztof Penderecki) – "Music for Marcel Duchamp" (John Cage) – "Hommage à John Cage" – "Lontano" (György Ligeti) – "Rothko Chapel 2" (Morton Feldman) – "Cry" – "On the Nature of Daylight" – "Uaxuctum: The Legend of the Mayan City Which They Themselves Destroyed for Religious Reasons – 3rd Movement" (Giacinto Scelsi) – "Quartet for Strings and Piano in A Minor" (Gustav Mahler) –
Disc 2 "Christian Zeal and Activity" (John Adams) – "Suite for Symphonic Strings: Nocturne" (Lou Harrison) – "Lizard Point" – "Four Hymns: II for Cello and Double Bass" (Alfred Schnittke) – "Root of an Unfocus" (John Cage) – "Prelude – The Bay" – "Wheel of Fortune" – "Tomorrow Night" – "This Bitter Earth"/"On the Nature of Daylight" –
Genre Shutter Island is a period piece with nods to different films in the film noir and horror genres, paying particular homage to Alfred Hitchcock's works. Scorsese stated in an interview that the main reference to Teddy Daniels was Dana Andrews's character in Laura, and he was also influenced by several very low-budget 1940s zombie movies by Val Lewton.
The main plot resembles William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration, as well as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. La Croix noted Shutter Island was a "complex and puzzling" work that borrowed from genres as diverse as detective, fantasy, and the psychological thriller.
There have been differing opinions of the film's ending, in which Laeddis asks Dr. Sheehan "which would be worse—to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?", a line that does not appear in the book. Professor James Gilligan of New York University was Scorsese's psychiatric adviser, and he said that Laeddis's last words mean: "I feel too guilty to go on living. I'm not going to actually commit suicide, but I'm going to vicariously commit suicide by handing myself over to these people who're going to lobotomize me." Dennis Lehane, however, said, "Personally, I think he has a momentary flash.... It's just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions."
Release