“Shutter Island,” Martin Scorsese’s latest gripping suspense thriller, is scary yet intensely moving at the same time.

Set in 1954, in the Boston Harbor, U.S Marshall Teddy Daniels investigates a mental hospital on Shutter Island, where a dangerous patient has escaped.

Once he gets there, he realizes the place is not what it seems, and he must work through his personal issues and solve the case before he gets trapped there forever.

Scorsese’s productions have been known to use striking images on screen to evoke emotion in the audience, and Shutter Island was no exception. The imagery was sickening and incredibly well done. It did exactly what it was meant to do: frighten and disturb the audience.

The film had a great way of drawing the audience into the story. You feel for the main character and join him in a dreadful spiral into insanity.

The music came mostly in loud intermittent booms, which gave the audience a feeling of foreboding and fear. It also created an undue amount of suspense in moments that were not suspenseful. It felt like it was too loud and didn’t quite fit with what was happening on screen.

There was also no break from the suspense. The film put you in a constant state of unrest, you didn’t know which characters to trust and you were always afraid that someone would pop out of the darkness at you.

The film had a linear storyline with short flashbacks chock full of symbolism and brilliant imagery. They appeared in short bursts, which were just enough to grab attention and keep the audience guessing, but they were confusing and appeared randomly in inappropriate places.

The ending plot twist was obvious and exactly one that you would expect from a mental institution thriller. It was easy to spot from about halfway through the movie. Still the twist played out well and made for a decent ending.

Whenever a twist is implemented in a movie, there is almost a guarantee of multiple views because the meaning of the entire movie changes after the twist.

Leonardo DiCaprio did very well in his performance. He was able to show a range of emotions without going overboard and making it too dramatic.

Michelle Williams gave probably the most impressive performance in this movie. She played Dolores, Teddy’s dead wife, who appears in flashbacks and dream sequences. She is, for the most part, quiet and calm. When those attributes would usually make a character seem docile or harmless, it made her deadly and creepy.

Both Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo gave memorable but not outstanding performances. Kingsley played Dr. Cawley, the psychiatrist, and Ruffalo played Teddy’s partner, Chuck. Each of their characters were friendly, yet there was something about them that was suspicious or mistrustful, which can be difficult to pull off effectively.

The psychotic patients were very well played. With the help of makeup and special effects, the characters were sinister and menacing without being cheesy or fake.

Visually, the film had mostly a dark and grayish tint to it, probably to give the film an overall stormy feel, but some reels were distinctly more green or blue tinted than others. This was, however, an inconsistency that the average viewer may not pick up on.

Overall, “Shutter Island” keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and scared out of their wits.

There are some aspects that could have been better, but it was definitely worth the price of a