Shutter Island vs The Box

It’s a rarity for me to enjoy a thriller on any level, let alone be moved by one. The Silence of the Lambs springs to mind. Seven. The Others. Zodiac. To this list: Shutter Island. Martin Scorsese’s film is being sold and reviewed as some sort of pop confection, like he made one for the masses, or a check, or for fun. I suppose any or all of those would be fine, but Shutter Island is more of a puzzle than anything else I’ve seen lately, maybe more than anything since Memento. It’s a haunted house story, a missing person mystery, and an acting showcase for its cast, especially Leonardo DiCaprio.

It’s 1954. DiCaprio is Teddy, a widowed U.S. Marshal called to investigate a potential crime at Shutter Island, an institution for the criminally insane. Think Arkham Asylum, surrounded by water. It’s a terrifying mix of overly-sanitized medical facilities, medieval dungeons, and your typical gothic haunted libraries and mansions. Even Clarice Starling would be all, “No. I’ll wait in the car.” Teddy is joined on the case by his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo, shorter than DiCaprio, for those of you looking for new trivia); they literally meet on the ferry to Shutter Island. A patient, a woman named Rachel, is missing. She’s delusional, thinking that Shutter Island is her home, and that its staff are visitors and delivery men. She doesn’t remember drowning her kids in a lake, although that was her crime. And now she’s gone. The staff at Shutter Island is so blasé about the whole affair that it’s infuriating to Teddy and Chuck, who expect their badges to carry more clout. There’s obviously a conspiracy and a cover-up in play. Why were the U.S. Marshals called at all, if there’s not going to be any cooperation? The local police are on the scene, but they’re not much help either. Each question is met defensively, and answers are only given with sighs, rolled eyes, or incredulous laughter, like every employee of Shutter Island is a witness on C.S.I.

There is so much not to spoil about Shutter Island. Imagine if every fourth of The Sixth Sense packed the wallop of the ending. Here’s what I can tell you: Teddy’s mission at Shutter Island goes beyond finding the missing patient. Also, he’s haunted by WWII, his dead wife, and a previous case. He and Chuck are especially frustrated and creeped out by the heads of Shutter Island, played by Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow. Besides that, all I can tell you is that Shutter Island contains a series of out-of-the-park performances by Michelle Williams and Emily Mortimer, and in smaller roles, Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine (yeah, Buffalo Bill is in Shutter Island. Parts of it will scare you, okay?), Patricia Clarkson and Robin Bartlett, one of those great character actors who comes in for a quick scene and changes a movie completely. Can that be an Oscar category? Foremost though, is Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been around long enough as an actor now that he’s no longer playing the rookie, or the underdog, or the young upstart with something to prove. He’s the lead actor in a great movie, and gives the strongest, most emotional performance of his career. There are moments of Shutter Island in which DiCaprio’s Teddy twists his face into some sort of film noir grimace, squinting his eyes to slits and biting down on his cigarettes. It’s a bit of a pose, and whether it’s Teddy doing it because he wants to appear tougher to the suspects at Shutter Island, or DiCaprio’s doing it to pay tribute to old movies, it works. A third option, my favorite,  is maybe Teddy’s doing it because he’s seen it in old movies.

Martin Scorsese directed Shutter Island with a huge nod to Film Noir, as well as Hitchcock. When Teddy and Chuck take the ferry to Shutter Island, it’s an obvious technique, with the water and the horizon appearing just a little too close to the screen. Every scene pops with Scorsese’s version of Technicolor, especially those with Michelle Williams. Later, a sequence among the cliffs surrounding a lighthouse recalls Vertigo. There are mistaken identities, mysterious doubles, and a blond woman who holds the secrets. Shutter Island is fun, to be sure, but it’s deeper than you might expect. The ending is such a punch, in terms of emotion and plot twists, you’ll shudder. See what I did there?

The Box is another thriller that plays with memories, threats, conspiracies and the films of another era. In this case, it’s the horror and science fiction of the 1960s and ‘70s. It’s got the look down pat, but doesn’t seem to believe that those movies were interesting or challenging enough, so The Box also contains endless subplots and confusions that border on embarrassing. Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are a couple living in Virginia in 1976. She’s a teacher; he works for Nasa. She’s missing the toes on one foot. See, that kind of stuff. Extra little stuff that might sound like bonus character information, but is just…missing toes. They’re in debt, and as fate would have it, are visited by a stranger (Frank Langella, who is missing half of his face, also for basically no reason). He presents them with a box and says they can have one million dollars if they press the button on top. If they do, however, someone they haven’t met will die.

Eventually, after much hemming and hawing in thick Southern accents, they push the button. Now, up until this point, there’s been a paranoid Twilight Zone vibe to much of The Box, and had it maintained this, just keeping the story about greed and human nature, we might have really had something. Instead, The Box becomes a story of brainwashing, Mars, the afterlife, inter-dimensional water columns, nose-bleeds, time travel and the lines of loyalty between family members. It’s complicated, but while the complications of Shutter Island made that movie maddening and fun, the complications of The Box make everyone involved look kind of stupid. The director, Richard Kelly, knows we liked Donnie Darko, so he just piles all the crap from that movie onto this one. Is he maybe a bit of a one-trick pony? I hope not. He’s got a cool visual style to his movies, but the script is a mess. And while being a mess was kind of the point of Donnie Darko, a movie like The Box, in which the plot can be described in one sentence, requires a bit of focus and clarity. The Box has none. I didn’t understand much of it, but even worse, I didn’t believe it either.

Shutter Island: A

The Box: D