Crazed Martin Scorsese fans, step away from that tattoo needle! Before you add Shutter Island next to The Aviator and Raging Bull in your bodily Marty shrine, take note—the movie has been retitled, according to Empire Online.
Yes, you’re thinking, Marty has probably come up with some awesome new title that evokes the buckets of bloods we’ll be given-- The Departed, after all, sounded more like an airline announcement than a gangster epic. Surely he’s making up for lost time with this one? Uh, not quite. The new title, sure to get your adrenaline pumping, is… Ashecliffe.
What’s with all the extra “e”s? What the hell is an Ashecliffe anyway? My first guess is a stately British manor, or a certain brand of velour smoking jacket, or maybe a really exclusive kind of brandy. None of these things, I’m sorry to say, tells me “Martin Scorsese’s next great criminal epic.” To refresh your memories, Shutter Island is the project starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as two FBI agents who travel to a remote island that hosts a mental asylum; a female prisoner has escaped, and some mysterious happenings make it a lot more difficult to find her.
The new title worries me actually, since Ashecliffe quite easily evokes the haunted mansions that make up half the horror movies these days. Is Scorsese seriously making a horror movie set in a mental asylum? I’m not saying I doubt the guy, but seriously? I’ll be holding out for some set photos or something that proves that this isn’t just The Others 2: Now, With More Dudes!
