Shutter Island

I don’t know why I didn’t get into Shutter Island, the latest Scorcese / diCaprio collaboration. Perhaps it was because I’d read some reviews and was ready for the twist. Perhaps because the whole isolated mental asylum-cum-high security prison looked alarmingly like my old boarding school, which was unintentionally both apt and hilarious. Perhaps it just wasn’t a very good film.

Set on an island in Boston harbour, Shutter Island actually filmed in the now-closed Medfield State Hospital in Massachussetts – which is itself an uncanny recreation of the leafy country campus of Gresham’s School, Holt, I swear to God. There are some grim concentration camp scenes too that shot in Taunton, Mass. – there’s a nice report from the local Enterprise News about the excitement in the community when the movie rolled into town.