The cast's performance is outstanding, unlike the rest of "Shutter Island."

"I can't stomach the water," says Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) after he pukes his guts out on the ferry ride to Shutter Island. The water seems to be the only thing to never escape him. He's surrounded by it on the island, pounded on by it from the storms, and afflicted by it in his memories.

The year is 1954 and Teddy is a U.S. deputy marshal sent to the island to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a World War II war widow who snapped and drowned her three kids in a lake. She is locked up in the country's most notorious island for the criminally insane and seemingly "evaporated, straight through the walls."

Teddy meets his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) who is his faithful sidekick through most of the movie. Ruffalo is superb, as were all the other actors. I was rooting for him to be good and not turn on Teddy in the end like some cop movies do, because he played the loyal cohort with an understated strength, steadfastness, and even occasional glints of sadness. I got the feeling he just wanted to keep Teddy safe from whatever monstrosities they encountered in the asylum.

They meet Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), who fits the stereotypical "good psychiatrist" who only wants what's best for his patients by letting them be themselves and not beat, mangle, torture, perform scary brain surgeries, or overmedicate the crazy out of them.

Teddy and Chuck's journey in finding Rachel is an arduous one. Dr. Cawley won't give them the patient's file and is resistant to letting them speak to the head doctor who was supervising Rachel at the time she went missing. They sneak off to do more investigative work on their own.

Like all the characters DiCaprio plays in Martin Scorsese's movies, he's got a tortured past with a dead somebody, or in this case, some bodies, in his closet. He has recurring nightmares of his dead wife (Michelle Williams) who simultaneously drips water and bursts into flames in his arms when he can't let go of her ghost.

His dreams are filled with haunting images of his time in Nazi Germany when he was an American soldier. He pushes the gun away with his foot from a Nazi commander who is laying half-dead on the floor after a botched suicide attempt and watches him bleed bright red rivulets of blood from the hole in his head. He is guilt-ridden that he couldn't save the people who died in the concentration camps, and even more so about an ever-present looming event that he can never get a handle on until the end of the movie.

The imagery, the mood, and the acting were incredibly captivating. It was the story and the outcome that I had a major problem with. Scorsese showed scenes that were both spooky and powerful, but ultimately led nowhere.

As Teddy walks into the asylum for the first time, a balding, emaciated woman puts her finger to her lips in slow motion and says, "Shhhhh." When he interrogates a patient who knew Rachel, she scribbles in his notepad, "Run." When he finally meets the "real" Rachel in a cave after climbing through a mountain of rats, she reaffirms a government conspiracy theory he's known all along. Those scenes, among others, were great in establishing tone, but did nothing to show me what I already knew.

The movie was completely predictable and unoriginal. I understand it pays homage to all the old classics, but there has to be something more to it than just the obvious, or what everyone's seen before.

"Infernal Affairs" was such an outstanding movie that I was upset about it being remade into "The Departed." Then, to my surprise, I liked Scorsese's version better because he changed the ending. He gave me something more.

"Shutter Island" is billed as a psychological thriller with a "twist," but the ending is so hackneyed it's hard to believe there's anything twisty about it. There's nothing to ponder or think about in "Shutter Island." Scorsese explains everything to the audience in the last 20 minutes, even using a chalkboard to conveniently highlight anything a person may have missed.

I got sucked into the noirish, atmospheric setting and loved the Stanley Kubrick-like music. Ingram Marshall's 1981 rendition of a foghorn in the opening and subsequent suspenseful scenes were both jarring and familiar, as if I met the music in the shape of a long-lost friend from old, beloved horror movies.

Scorsese's direction showed the bleak, remote island in the 1950s so tangibly that I shivered from the rain and cold, but in the end, I still walked out of the theater feeling like half of all that beautiful imagery was a tremendous waste.