Shutter Island
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: February 19, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
7
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
When was the last time you had to wait until the final sentence of a film to understand all the details? When was the last time you went to a genre movie – or what looked like one in spooky trailers – and realized the director had fulfilled that promise and meditated on his favorite topic? Shutter Island does just that. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
There’s a purpose to all this madness--though to talk about the primary reason the film succeeds would be giving the game away--but it should be appreciated first as a vivid, waking nightmare. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesBetsy Sharkey
Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJohn Anderson
Not since "Raging Bull" has Mr. Scorsese so brazenly married brutality to beauty. Not since "Kundun" has one of his films felt so aspirational. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
DiCaprio, in his most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet, is the vessel Scorsese uses to lead us through the film’s laby­rinth. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film's primary effect is on the senses. Everything is brought together into a disturbing foreshadow of dreadful secrets. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Atmospheric, absorbing and completely in the control of the man who made it -- unlike, especially, “Bringing Out the Dead,” which it sometimes resembles. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Even when it's clear Scorsese has decided to employ fakery and allow it to be obvious, it's done with elegance and beauty. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
DiCaprio delivers a startling prettyboy-to-tough nut makeover – but he has to play it close to his chest here for the storyline to play out. Once you get past the trickery, Shutter Island offers sumptuous, enthralling, shivery gothic filmmaking with a hardboiled heart and a sly line in asylum humour. If a pot is being boiled, at least it’s an intricately-decorated pot on a spectacular fire. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It's pure Bedlam, but for genre fans, Scorsese makes it feel like coming home. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Shutter Island holds you, but it doesn't grip you. It's as if Scorsese had put his filmmaking fever on psychotropic drugs. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The tone and mood of Shutter Island are different on the screen from on the page -- the shadows darker than you imagined, the violence more ghastly, the blood redder. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A case can be made that the movie is so enamored with this aspect of its approach that it fails to connect on an emotional level. Shutter Island addresses some powerful, disturbing concepts but, despite effective performances by the leads, the movie's psychological impact is minimal. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Scorsese has great fun with a story that in the final analysis does not really demand to be taken any more seriously as history than "Inglourious Basterds." Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
It's a pleasure to experience Scorsese as a circus master. One just hopes he doesn't continue in this vein. Read full review
70
Village VoiceNick Pinkerton
Since more attention has gone into filigreeing details into each scene than worrying about the way they'll fit together, the rattletrap engages you moment-to-moment, even as the overall pacing stops and lurches alarmingly. Read full review
70
Boxoffice MagazineSara Schieron
Shutter Island is a bear hug to cinema while it’s also an occasionally tart valentine to genre. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
What Scorsese brings to the table, having created more than his share of rascally villains, is a renewed sense of horror and despair at the power of evil. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
No one is denying the energy and the dread that stalked the best B movies of the past, but, when the best director of the present revives such monsters, how can he hope to do better than a B-plus? Read full review
63
ObserverRex Reed
This gruesome thriller set in a fogbound insane asylum is incomprehensible and fatally flawed, but having said all of that, I will also say this: It never seems anything less than the work of a skillful film buff. Mr. Scorsese may be a smart aleck, but he’s a professional smart aleck. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger Moore
It’s not bad, but as Scorsese, America’s greatest living filmmaker and film history buff should know, even Hitchcock came up short on occasion. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
This quasi-horror film has the great director's usual craftsmanship and a stellar cast, but ultimately it's an infuriating trick that makes its most provocative ideas disappear. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
There are many many fine performers here, including the terrific Patricia Clarkson as the elusive Rachel. But Shutter Island is not so much a character study as it is an atmospheric thriller. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
This is a long, heavy film, in which Scorsese’s aerobic moviemaking turns mannered and uncharacteristically passive. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Despite its flaws, Shutter Island is worth seeing for the palpably nightmarish and gothic world conceived by Scorsese Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
Shutter Island is slumming: minor but enjoyably nuts. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The ending is powerful..., but Shutter Island is a long slog. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
It is less a film than a puny trampoline -- an occasion, though a grim one, for this most fervently movie-mad of American directors to show off his love for the various pulp genres mooshed together by the 2003 Dennis Lehane novel. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
Shutter Island is an aesthetically and at times intellectually exciting puzzle, but it's never emotionally involving. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Was it worth slogging through the nearly two hours of damned muddle to get to those last affecting moments? Not often in movies is the destination so much better than the journey. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
It comes on strong, but in its bloody heart of hearts it’s no more resonant than one of those old Vincent Price-Edgar Allan Poe contraptions – and less entertaining, too. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
For all the trickiness and bluster, Shutter Island is dead inside. Read full review
38
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
If Shutter Island, a gothic thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, were put to a free association test, the word most likely to come to mind would certainly be "weird." Read full review
30
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Scorsese is pushing, I guess, for something that combines a '40s horror-thriller with a contemporary psychological tragedy. What he ends up with is more like a Hardy Boys mystery directed by David Lynch. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Scorsese stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie's importance and only highlights its unimportance. Read full review
20
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Something TERRIBLE is afoot. Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself. Read full review
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