13 Movies Like Shutter Island You Need To Watch Tonight

Every Martin Scorsese film is worth watching, and one we'd like to see get more attention is 2010's Shutter Island – a dark and brooding neo-noir that's sure to surprise you. Leonardo DiCaprio is really riveting as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. marshal who comes to an isolated psychiatric hospital to investigate a supposedly missing patient. But the case is far more complicated than anyone could initially guess. The hospital has seemingly endless secrets ... and soon, Teddy can't even trust himself. We heartily second Roger Ebert's review of the film, which says, "That's what the movie is about: atmosphere, ominous portents, the erosion of Teddy's confidence and even his identity. It's all done with flawless directorial command."

If you love Shutter Island as much as we do, you might want some other movies that will scratch the same itch. We've got a great lineup for you, with films full of conspiracies and twists and turns, featuring heavy atmosphere and eerily unreliable "reality." Pick up any one of these, and you're sure to be satisfied.

If you like Shutter Island because you like complex, twisty historical thrillers with plenty of moral ambiguity and heavy-duty drama, go ahead and settle in with Christopher Nolan's The Prestige. The movie is about an obsessive and vicious feud between two 19th-century stage magicians, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.

Shutter Island is all about Teddy, but The Prestige splits its psychological suspense between dueling protagonists. It might result in slightly simpler characters, but it allows for plenty of crackling drama. This is one battle of the wills you won't be able to look away from, and sure enough, The Prestige is highly acclaimed. Empire's Dan Jolin described it thusly: "Like a street-illusionist making coins dance across his knuckles, [Nolan] draws his audience in as close as possible. The harder we're looking, the more we're concentrating, the more effective his ultimate misdirection will prove."

Like Shutter Island, The Prestige invites rewatches, and you'll have the same question for it — the same one people have for most magicians, actually: "How'd he do that?"

At first, you wouldn't think Shutter Island and Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan would have too much in common. One is a mystery with an FBI agent unraveling layers of truth and lies at an island hospital. The other is all about a ballerina struggling with the pressures that come with the role of a lifetime. But if you scratch the surface, the two films share a lot of DNA.

When Nina (Natalie Portman) gets the challenging lead role in Swan Lake, it's a catalyst for all her insecurities, ambitions, and bottled-up desires, and everyone in her life seems to make the anxieties worse. Her mother (Barbara Hershey) is suffocating and emotionally manipulative. Her only would-be friend, the sparkling Lily (Mila Kunis), might betray her for the part. Her director (Vincent Cassel) could decide at any moment that she's not up for the role. Forget about opening night — the real drama in Black Swan is all in Nina's head, as the whole world becomes an exaggerated part of her delusions and paranoia.

In fact, you could say that Black Swan is like Shutter Island turned inside out, with all the surprises in Shutter Island being up-front text in Black Swan — which saves its own peculiar twists for later. And it's excellent. Reason called it an "ambitious shocker" that's "infused with ... creative brio."

Christopher Nolan's 2000 breakout film, Memento, didn't invent the jaw-droppingly twist-filled psychological thriller, but it may have perfected it. The film is about Leonard (an electric Guy Pearce), who's now unable to create and store new memories. He has to resort to a complex system of photographs, notes, and even tattoos to clue himself into where he is and what he's doing. And he has a lot to do. Despite all the chaos in his head, he's determined to find John G., the man who raped and murdered his wife and shattered his memory.

Nolan tells Leonard's story in reverse, periodically jumping back a step so we share Leonard's disorientation while, like him, trying to make sense of partial clues in the middle of a lot of confusion. But as fun as Memento is at its most mind-boggling, it's even better once you finally start to understand. Or at least think you understand.

Film critic William Arnold with The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called the film "a whole new kind of cinematic experience," adding, "Amazingly, 29-year-old writer-director Nolan ... not only makes Memento work as a non-linear puzzle film, but as a tense, atmospheric thriller and a first-rate vehicle for Pearce." Memento offers substance as well as novelty, and that's enough to make it hold up for all of our repeating viewings.

If you want a torturous conspiracy, they don't get any more elaborate or pitch-black than Park Chan-wook's Oldboy. There might still be people who think that all international movies are quiet, artsy pictures, but trust us, that illusion won't survive a viewing of South Korea's Oldboy, which is basically an ambassador for visceral, powerfully dramatic cinema.

Oldboy is the story of businessman Oh Dae-su, whose life takes a horrific turn when he's kidnapped and imprisoned. Dae-su spends 15 years locked in a hotel room, with no idea why he's there or who would want to do this to him. All he sees of the outside world comes from his TV screen ... and the news informs him that his wife is dead and everyone thinks he's responsible. He doesn't even know what's happened to his younger daughter. All he can do is spend the intervening years physically and mentally honing himself for escape and revenge. But when he's unexpectedly released from his bizarre prison, the story is far from over.

The film received high praise, with Stephanie Zacharek at Salon saying, "It's a grand, gritty, indelible experience, the sort of picture that ... envelops you in a well-told story while also evoking subtle but strong gradations of emotion. ... It's like a flower watered with blood."

Like a lot of Christopher Nolan's films, Inception is a fantastic puzzle box and a deeply clever sci-fi story with the gripping suspense of a thriller – and the psychology of one too. At its core, it's the story of a man struggling with the weight of his own guilt.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a professional thief who uses cutting-edge dream technology to commit acts of corporate espionage. He longs to get back to his two children America, but he can't return home until he clears his name. All he needs is to do one high-profile job for Saito (Ken Watanabe), who has the wealth to pull all the necessary strings. It's just that the job — implanting an idea in another person's subconscious — is considered almost impossible. The clock is ticking, and Cobb has to sell his fantasies convincingly enough to provide real pathos.

That setup — even more than the shared presence of Leonardo DiCaprio — binds Inception and Shutter Island together. After all, one of the best reasons to rewatch Shutter Island is the fun of putting together how the world of the story is constructed for the benefit of DiCaprio's Teddy. It features its own case of attempted inception, in a way, and it's fascinating to compare the way the process works in the two movies.

Clint Eastwood's Changeling handles some of the same things as Shutter Island — historical atmosphere, a conspiracy, questioned perceptions, and a truth that might be too devastating to handle. 

The film stars Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins, a mother whose young son is abducted. His disappearance leads to outcry against the LAPD, but the public is soon satisfied by a happy ending. The police find the boy and return him to his mother. Or do they? Christine is adamant that the child they've given her is not his son, no matter what he says, but the system is eager to push all her objections aside. The boy is shorter than her son was? Um, let's say that trauma just does that sometimes. Don't worry about it.

Of course, Christine can't just accept this replacement son, and that brings down a lot of institutional ire on her head, as the police and city would rather have hospitalized than take her concerns seriously. They just want all this to be over. All of this results in a tense, chilling psychological thriller that Shutter Island fans should love. Empire Online called it a "fabulous drama" that weaves neatly between genres, turning from noir to horror to courtroom drama. Fans of any genre are sure to be satisfied with this dark treat.