Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.5

Shutter Island 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 30, 2020

Paramount has released Director Martin Scorsese's highly regarded 2010 film 'Shutter Island' to the UHD format, exclusively in SteelBook packaging. The UHD sports a new 2160p/Dolby Vision video transfer. The disc carries over the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The UHD includes no new extras but the bundled Blu-ray is identical to the 2010 disc which includes two featurettes. See the 'Video' section of the review for coverage of the new transfer and the 'Special Features and Extras' section of the review below for more on the SteelBook's look and feel.

U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) have been assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliff Hospital, a care center for the criminally insane located on the remote Shutter Island, situated some miles off the coast of Massachusetts. The missing patient -- Rachel Salando, a World War II widow and a woman accused of murdering her three young children -- has apparently vanished from the hospital, through her sealed room, past the guards, in the cold, and without footwear. It's too much for Teddy and Chuck, and they quickly believe that Rachel may have had help in her escape, a claim that the institution's head psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) flatly rejects. When Cawley further hinders the investigation by refusing to hand over relevant materials, Teddy and Chuck expand the scope of their investigation to include both the institution and the island on which it is situated, ultimately unraveling a complex web of lies, despair, confusion, and pain that prove dangerous and inescapable enemies that may alter the very fabric of their existences.

For a full film review, please click here.

Shutter Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shutter Island's 2160p/Dolby Vision UHD release does right by the movie. This is finessed improvement over the Blu-ray, which at even a decade in age still holds up as an extremely good presentation. The UHD's increased resolution handles the material scrumptiously, offering a pleasantly fine level of natural, filmic detail accentuated by a steady, authentic grain structure. The picture is incredibly sharp and finely detailed, revealing a level of intricacy and intimacy that demonstrates what the format is all about. The sense of visual authenticity is quite spectacular as viewers examine facial textures that command the screen with shot-dominant clarity in every close-up. The period attire, including twill suits or police uniforms, showcase amazing fabric clarity and seam definition. The world seen around the film comes to life with remarkable clarity, including a diverse landscape of grasses, rocks, stone, bricks, and concrete, all in varying states of upkeep and decay alike. The UHD is a boon for the film's expert production design. The divergent locales also mean divergent colors. The Dolby Vision color grading brings a new level of tonal accuracy, subtlety, and intensity to the screen, maintaining an authentic feel for every hue but bolstering the palette scene-by-scene with each color dialed in to appropriate depth and detail. As the film explores various locations, so too do numerous colors earn the chance to shine. Whether warm interiors, gray and bleak prison locales, intensely green grassy fields, or gory red blood in a World War II flashback, the Dolby Vision color palette creates a natural, finely graded color presentation to every shot. Add more intensely luminance brights, perfectly crisp whites, and superb black levels, all presented with a perfection beyond the existing Blu-ray's capabilities, and the UHD proves to be a practically perfect presentation of Scorsese's film.

Shutter Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rather than reconfigure to Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, Paramount has simply retained the existing Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack for this UHD release. For a full audio review, please click here.

Shutter Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This new UHD release of Shutter Island includes no new extras. The bundled Blu-ray is identical to the 2010 release and brings over the pair of extras listed below. For full reviews, please click here. Note that no digital copy code is included with purchase.

• Behind the Shutters
• Into the Lighthouse

This SteelBook variant is currently the only way to own the film on UHD; there is no traditional packaging release option at this time. The SteelBook is dark red dominant, with a front cover that depicts main character Teddy Daniels' face encompassing the top half. Below is the lighthouse that plays a prominent location role in the film. It is emitting a light to the left. The film's title features prominently below the center line in white, worn type. Scorsese and DiCaprio credits appear above in smaller and darker letters. The rear panel maintains the intense red and depicts Teddy walking from darkness into light via a large angular arch opening. The image is brightest at its center point and depicts the character walking back to front with a gun in the hand, his body a silhouette against the illumination. A Paramount logo appears bottom right. The front and rear panels are slick and smooth and will show fingerprints. The spine features the film's title in the same scuffed lettering as the front. It is slightly above center. A Paramount logo has been placed at the top and a rather large Ultra HD Blu-ray logo appears at the bottom, sandwiched between "2-disc set" and a Blu-ray logo.

There is no digital code inside. The Blu-ray and UHD discs appear on their own hubs in staggered-stacked formation. The inner print is a two-panel spread, again dominantly dark red, depicting the "Manacled Woman" as she raises her finger to her mouth: "shhhh," as seen near the beginning of the movie. The character appears prominently on the left; the right hand side is comprised primarily of dark, out of focus background.

Shutter Island 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Shutter Island's UHD, at time of writing, is only available in SteelBook packaging. The disc delivers a first-rate 2160p/Dolby Vision video presentation. Paramount has opted not to include an updated soundtrack, but the decade-old DTS track is plenty good. No new extras are included, which is a shame given the scarcity of them on the existing Blu-ray. The SteelBook packaging is quite nice. Highly recommended.