The film begins on an ominous note. Eerie strings play as the film fades to white. Soon, a ship appears out of the fog. Cut to a gumshoe, looking and speaking as if he has stepped straight out of a [[Mickey Spillane]] novel (fitting, since the setting is 1954), trying to hold himself together and fight off a case of severe sickness (ìall that waterî) in the shipís bathroom. It turns out the gumshoe, US Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are being ferried to one Shutter Island, rock island in the middle of Boston Harbor-one that houses an institution for the criminally insane.

So begins ìShutter Islandî, a haunting, challenging thriller by master filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Teddy and his partner are there seemingly to investigate the disappearance of a female patient-but Teddy has personal reasons of his own for taking the case. Though it appears at first that Teddy is a gifted investigator, it seems that every lead he follows only opens multiple other doors. Soon, Teddy is battling suspicious doctors, a downright sinister warden, a hurricane that descends on the island and, most critically, his own neurosis as he strives for the truth. As seeming clues lead nowhere and the twists in the case only multiply, Teddy soon begins to question everything around him, including his own sanity.