Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Well, that was a mindscrew


So, Barista, myself and a couple of friends went and saw Shutter Island tonight and well, if you like your mind fucked with, this is a movie for you!

It was fantastic!

It's one of those that has you thinking you completely know what's going on 1/2 way through the movie. Then this event happens and you start to second guess, then another happens and you're thinking something else, then a 3rd event happens and you're completely turned around again and then the next you know you feel just as lost and hopeless as poor little Leonardo's character feels.

I LOVED it!

And I also realized that while I get squemish and treat slasher movies like a VH1 reality show. Something that you don't want to watch, and attempt to look away, but in the end, manage to get sucked into anyway. Well, that's how Barista is when mind game movies. I was sitting on the edge of my seat,adrenaline pumping, ready for something to happen and he was leaning as far away from the screen as possible,half hiding behind his coat.

I read the Ebert review of it on Friday and he referred to it as "haunted house" type of movie. And he was correct. The lights go out right when they shouldn't, the characters walk down the too silent, too dim hall, and you're pissing yourself because you keep waiting for something to happen and of course it doesn't. That was this movie.

The crazy people are amazing. There's the cute old lady you feel bad for and don't know why she's locked up, then she explains that she axed her husband. The dork who sliced his nurses face open, but looks like he wouldn't have hurt a fly and then the crazies that we only see in the dim light, adding to their psychotic appeal.

The movie also gets at your emotional gut as well, playing the card of the mom who drowned her kids and now we see images of hopeless dead ghost children, and also playing all too realistic looking flashbacks of Nazi concentration camps ( part of Leo's past-in the movie).

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that had my adrenaline pumping as Leo runs down the dim and dark halls of "ward 3" one minute, and then enducing near vomiting and tears while images from the Nazi concentration camps come into view 5 minutes later.

If you like any sort of movie that confuses you, makes you sweat as much as the character you're watching or if you just want to catch a glimpse of Leo with his shirt off. Shutter Island is the movie for you.

1 comment:

stillarockstar said...

I don't like horror movies, but this one has interested me for some reason...Meghan told me her friend hated it, so it's good to see someone liked it. I'm trying to decide whether to go... ???