“Shutter Island” is director Martin Scorsese’s most recent film.  The film came out Feb. 19, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley.

The plot of the film starts out in 1954, with Federal Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule arriving at Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients at the asylum.

However, nothing is as it seems on the island, and when a hurricane traps the Federal Marshals on the island, they get wrapped into an affair to determine the truth of the sinister goings-on of the asylum.

The film is quite a departure from Scorsese’s usual mode of operation, which is to make landmark crime films like “Taxi Driver”, “Goodfellas,” and “The Departed”.

“Shutter Island” could be classified as more a psychological thriller or horror film, with a style much akin to Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” in its use of atmosphere to build sense of unease that is compelling.

It’s a compelling story, and is rife with surrealistic and nightmarish dream sequences that are as visually stimulating as they are potentially disturbing.

DiCaprio delivers what I feel is one of his best performances to date as Daniels, a disturbed World War II veteran and Federal Marshal.

DiCaprio gives a good amount of depth to the character, giving him enough humanizing qualities to make you care about what happens to him.

Kingsley is also superb in his role as one of the head psychiatrists at the asylum, giving the character the right amount of mysterious benevolence and ominous menace to never really give you a real grip on where he stands in the film.

Ruffalo puts forth a decent effort, but at times comes across as being a bit cheesy in his delivery of lines.

The main star of this film isn’t the actors, however, it’s the atmosphere of the entire film.  Right from the get-go, viewers get a feeling of ominous doom that clouds the entire film.

Scorsese did an excellent job of giving much of the film a sort of clouded-over feel, as if the audience isn’t quite awake and is trying to piece together the mystery of what is going on at the heart of the film.  Indeed, the atmosphere is a metaphor for the journey that Daniels goes through over the course of the film, right up until the horrifyingly clear ending notes.

A viewer cannot talk about this film without giving a proper nod to the soundtrack.  Each of the film’s musical tracks was selected from pre-existing works and used in such a way that it beautifully ads to the value of each and every scene.  The music never seems laughably inappropriate like in some of Scorsese’s other works.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film.  After one viewing, it’s not overly complex, but has enough details in it that audiences might want to see it again.

It’s got enough going on that the audience isn’t falling asleep, but is simple enough that any moderately high-functioning human being can easily piece the initial events of the film together.