10 Horror Movies That Subtly Spoil The Ending Early

Something of an outlier in Martin Scorsese’s filmography, where the director stepped away from gangster movies and dramas and dipped into psychological thriller/horror territory.

Shutter Island is the story of Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWII vet suffering from headaches and flashbacks and what appears to be combat PTSD, while he and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Once on the island, however, Teddy’s reality starts to unravel, pulling him this way and that into a wild final act reveal: Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient of Ashecliffe who is undergoing a grand, experimental, and radical form of therapy, and Chuck (real name Dr. Lester Sheehan) is his therapist.

Outlandish, sure, but the signs are there if you know where to look.

Certainly, the entire opening sequence is a what's-what of what's really going on: Teddy wakes up in a cell on the ship on the way to Shutter Island with no memory of how he got there, he only meets his partner for the first time once on the boat, and he carries no lighter - all telltale signs of him being an inmate. But the real clincher is Teddy and Chuck’s first interaction with the island guards. They tense up around Teddy, and then Chuck - supposedly a seasoned pro - visibly fumbles his gun strap, seemingly with no idea how to handle or manage a sidearm.