Story development: Three act structure

I will be looking into the Three act structure for the film shutter island.

Act 1: Establish

•  U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is on a boat heading to the asylum for the criminally insane located on an island.

• They are investigating the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient who apparently vanished from a locked room.

• Teddy and his partner Chuck start a routine investigation of the island.

• Teddy sees a lighthouse but is told it has already been searched. The Marshals then go on to question the staff

• Teddy has a strange dream in which his dead wife tells him that Rachel is still on the island as well as the arsonist who caused her death

Act 2: crisis

• They interview patients from Rachel's group therapy sessions, one of workers distracts Chuck and warns Teddy to run.

• Teddy is motivated to investigate the institution after finding out experiments are being conducted on patients.

• Teddy has been informed that Rachel has been found and presents herself to him.

• In his sleep he has more strange dreams, followed by waking hallucinations.

• He is now determined to search for Laeddis in Ward C, which houses the most dangerous patients

• Here he finds a patient called Noyce who is afraid of being taken to the lighthouse, where lobotomies are performed, and tells Teddy that the entire investigation is a game constructed for him.

Act 3: Resolve

• Teddy rejoins Chuck and they head to the cliffs surrounding the island, intending to reach the lighthouse.

• Teddy finds a woman hiding in a cave who confirms his suspicions by revealing that she is the real Rachel Solando

• She says that Teddy has been similarly drugged since he arrived on the island after they are trying to develop mind control

• Teddy eventually makes it to the lighthouse, he finds Dr. Cawley who reveals that Teddy is not Edward Daniels, but ex-Marshal Andrew Laeddis.

• Cawley says that he has been a patient at Ashecliffe for two years since he murdered his manic depressive wife in a fit of rage after discovering she had drowned their children.

• Chuck then arrives and reveals himself as Dr. Sheehan, Andrew's psychiatrist

• Cawley explains that Andrew has gone through repeated cycles of realizing the truth, only to regress into his fantasy again

• The next morning, Andrew once again calls Sheehan "Chuck" and mentions exposing the Island's doings to the outside world.