50 free Shutter Island trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Shutter Island trivia quiz covers Martin Scorsese's 2010 film and the Dennis Lehane novel it came from: the plot (the missing patient, Ward C, the woman in the cave, the lighthouse), the twist and the two anagrams that give it away, the cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley) and the making of it: the Massachusetts hospital and islands that stood in for Ashecliffe, the all-classical soundtrack Robbie Robertson assembled, and the argument between Scorsese's psychiatrist and Lehane over what the last line means. Roughly a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has seen the film, a third are medium, and the rest dig into the box office, the locations, the music and the differences between book and film. Play it solo, or use it as a thriller round for movie night. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed Shutter Island?
Martin Scorsese
It gave him his biggest opening weekend ever, $41 million, and became his second highest-grossing film worldwide at the time.
Q 02The film is based on a 2003 novel by which author of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone?
Dennis Lehane
He described the book as a hybrid of the Brontë sisters and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, deliberately stripping his heroes of modern tools like radios.
Q 03In what year is the story set?
1954
The book's storm is a real one that hit New England in August of that year.
Q 04What is the name of the hospital for the criminally insane on the island?
Ashecliffe
HBO and Paramount Television were reported in 2014 to be developing a prequel series named after it.
Q 05The island sits in the harbor of which city?
Boston
Lehane modelled the setting on Long Island in that harbor, which he visited as a boy during the blizzard of 1978.
Q 06The missing patient the marshals are sent to find is named what?
Rachel Solando
Her name is an anagram of Teddy's dead wife's name, one of two hidden in the film.
Q 07The missing patient was committed for killing her three children by what method?
Drowning
The detail is the key to the twist: it is exactly what Teddy's own wife did at their lakehouse.
Q 08Who plays Teddy's partner Chuck Aule?
Mark Ruffalo
Chuck turns out to be Dr. Lester Sheehan, the man treating Teddy, playing along with the roleplay.
Q 09Which Oscar winner plays Dr. John Cawley, the man running the hospital?
Ben Kingsley
His office scenes were shot on the second floor of a chapel at night, with lights through the windows faking daylight.
Q 10Which Swedish screen legend plays Dr. Naehring, the German-accented colleague who tries to sedate Teddy?
Max von Sydow
The Exorcist star was 80 when the film came out; his character embodies Teddy's wartime suspicions.
Q 11Who plays Teddy's late wife Dolores, who appears in his dreams?
Michelle Williams
Her character is manic-depressive; the film's version has her burn down the couple's apartment before the killings at the lake.
Q 12Two actresses play versions of the missing patient: Emily Mortimer and which other?
Patricia Clarkson
Mortimer's version is a nurse in disguise; Clarkson's, met in a sea cave, is revealed to be a hallucination.
Q 13Which actor plays George Noyce, the Ward C patient who warns Teddy not to trust his partner?
Jackie Earle Haley
Elias Koteas plays the scarred figure of Laeddis in Teddy's visions; Ted Levine is the warden.
Q 21Per Cawley, how many months earlier had doctors briefly brought Andrew back to reality?
9
This time, he warns, is the last chance before a lobotomy, because of Andrew's violence toward guards and patients.
Q 22The film's final line asks whether it is worse to live as a monster or to do what?
Die as a good man
The line is not in the book; Scorsese's psychiatric adviser read it as a chosen, vicarious suicide, while Lehane called it 'one moment of sanity'.
Q 23In the novel, what does Teddy grab in the final confrontation to shoot Cawley, only to find it is a toy?
A water pistol
The book's ending is bleaker still: the orderlies approach with 'a metal object wrapped in cloth'.
Q 14Teddy's wartime flashbacks are to the liberation of which concentration camp?
Dachau
The scenes were shot at the Whittenton Mills complex in Taunton, Massachusetts, whose old industrial buildings doubled for the camp.
Q 15Teddy blames an arsonist for his wife's death. What is the man's name, an anagram of Edward Daniels?
Andrew Laeddis
The reveal is that Teddy himself is that man, a former marshal who has been a patient for two years.
Q 16The missing patient's name is an anagram of Teddy's wife's full name, which is what?
Dolores Chanal
Both anagrams are in Lehane's novel as well as the film, and both are spelled out by Cawley in the finale.
Q 17Which restricted block does Teddy break into looking for the arsonist?
Ward C
The patient he meets there tells him the doctors experiment on people and lobotomise them at the far end of the island.
Q 18Where on the island does Teddy believe the lobotomies and experiments take place?
The lighthouse
The lighthouse scenes were shot at East Point in Nahant, Massachusetts.
Q 19The woman Teddy meets in a sea cave claims to be a former what?
Psychiatrist
She says she was committed to silence her after discovering mind-control experiments; the film reveals her as a hallucination.
Q 20In the finale, Cawley says Teddy's symptoms are withdrawal from which drug he has taken for two years?
Chlorpromazine
In the novel it is the wife who is medicated, with laudanum that Teddy forgets to lock away before leaving for two weeks.
Q 24In Shutter Island, Teddy cracks a code pointing to which unlisted patient number?
67
The hospital's records show only 66 patients, and Teddy is convinced the 67th is the arsonist he is hunting.
Q 25Which real 1954 storm batters the island in Lehane's novel?
Hurricane Carol
The film's storm scenes were shot at Wilson Mountain Reservation in Dedham, Massachusetts.
Q 26Who wrote the screenplay, after spending a year developing it with Phoenix?
Laeta Kalogridis
A rival studio had let its option on the novel lapse in 2003, and Lehane sold the rights to Phoenix instead.
Q 27Which studio let its option on the novel lapse in 2003 before Phoenix picked it up?
Columbia
Paramount then partnered on the release, which was pushed from October 2009 to February 2010 partly over marketing money.
Q 28The old state hospital in which Massachusetts town served as a key location for the asylum?
Medfield
The crew had wanted Worcester State Hospital, but demolition nearby made it impossible; they painted Medfield's brick walls to look like plywood.
Q 29Which real harbor islet, off Hull, stood in for the fictional one on screen?
Peddocks
Lehane's own inspiration was Long Island, which he visited as a child during the blizzard of 1978.
Q 30The lakeside cabin scene was shot at a stone lodge in which Massachusetts park in Easton?
Borderland
The lodge sits beside Leach Pond in Easton; the concentration-camp flashbacks were shot in Taunton's Whittenton Mills.