Thriller Assignment

The thriller i chose to analyse is "Shutter Island", a film set in 1954 about a U.S Marshal, Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule who visit the Ashcliffe hospital for the criminally insane on shutter island to find a missing patient.
The film is aimed at adults but is rated 15, it is rated this because the film has a heavy theme of murder, psychotic behavior and paranoia, but not an over the top use of expletives and violence.
The conventions of a phsychological thriller are all used in this, the build up of tension through the music and images, lighting, the threat of death being suggested, deception, obtrusive editing, flashbacks.
All of these tools are used to help build tension for the audience,  flashbacks are used to show an insight into the charactes background and help you understand what drives them in the story, for example in shutter island Teddy doesn't have actual flash backs but he has dreams related to his past. Similarly the constant feeling of Teddy being decieved by the head doctor, Dr. Cawley, helps in building the tension between the characters and drives the story while continuing the theme of paranoia. Toward the end of the first half of the film the two marshals suspect a part of the island to be housing medical experiments, with it being set in the 50's the transorbital labotmy was starting to be used in asylums, this suggests a threat of death (or a state worse than) to the characters. Throughout the film the music is a main tool in use of elevating the tension, its orchestral so lots of strings and trumpets, even when there is no music playing at all, the island feels eery, almost deserted at times. During the begining of the film quick cuts are used frequently to amplify the feeling of being locked or trapped on the island giving the audience the feeling of anxiety and slight panic.

Shutter Island has a chronological narrative with an element of anachronic order, i think this becasue throughout the film, its all in order, but the dreams he has are almost like flashbacks, and the final twist has quite a large flashback wich is crucial to the narrative. There are a number or turning points wich keep the audiences focus and keep them guessing, for example the first turning point is when Dr. Cawley informs them that Rachel (the missing patient) has returned, but no one told them, she just appears which makes you think that no one is being truly honest with the marshals. The second turning point would be when Teddy climbs down a cliff  after his partner who fell, as he gets down there chuck has vanished, Teddy attempts to climb back up but is distracted by a glowing cave, when he reaches the cave he meets the real Rachel, a former doctor of the hospital who was declaired insane by the chief doctor. The final twist was when Teddy stormed into the lighthouse where he thought the experiments were happening and found nothing but Dr. Cawley at a desk, Dr. Cawley explains to Teddy that he has been a patient at the hospital for a  number of years, and this whole thing was an ellaborate roll play to help snap him out of his psychosis. It is at this point when Teddy has the flash back wich explains what really happened to his wife and children and why he is at Ashcliffe.