20 Things You Somehow Missed In Shutter Island
7. The Shining Homage
If you're gonna borrow, you might as well borrow from the best, and that's certainly what Scorsese did at the start of his movie. If the music during the opening titles sounds familiar, that's because you've probably heard it before in another classic horror movie.
The titles are scored to an excerpt from György Ligeti's 1967 orchestral composition "Lontano," which was also used throughout Stanley Kubrick's iconic The Shining.
On one hand Scorsese was likely just nodding to one of his own favourite horror movies, but on the other, having the audience develop an unconscious association between this movie and one of the greatest horror films of all time is a pretty neat trick.