10 Most Twisted Asylum Horror Movies
4. Shutter Island
Walking the line between horror and thriller, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is a picture which has one of the great modern-day twists waiting in its final act.
As Teddy Daniels, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a US Marshal tasked with investigating a psychiatric facility on the titular island. Joined by partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). Teddy is searching for Rachel Solando, a missing patient who drowned her three children.
What unravels is a tale of underhand experiments, doom-proclaiming patients, a tinge of the supernatural, and a mystery that positions all of Shutter Island's key personnel as having something to do with Solando's disappearance and subsequent reappearance.
Of course, the big swerve of Shutter Island is that Teddy Daniels isn't a real person. Instead, Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis and is the most dangerous patient in the asylum. After his mentally ill wife Dolores Chanal drowned their three children, Laeddis murdered her and thus became incarcerated.
As is explained, Edward Daniels and Rachel Solando are anagrams of Andrew Laeddis and Dolores Chanal. The whole Teddy Daniels persona was created by Laeddis to hide the guilt he feels at not seeking help for his wife prior to her killing their children.
The events of Shutter Island were merely a desperate attempt to cure Andrew's insanity, with the facility's staff playing along in one last attempt to stop Laeddis from being lobotomised.