He tells whatsplaying.au, “The look of the film surprised me. It’s my vision filtered through Martin Scorsese’s consciousness. It’s utterly unique. At every step in the film I was unprepared for how it looked. It was really quite an experience.”

In the Houston Chronicle, he elaborates, “I remember the first time I saw one of the dream sequences, I thought, ‘Boy he went a little far.’ So I went back and checked the book. He didn’t go any place I hadn’t gone.”

EW.com asks him if Scorsese’s vision of the island matches his, and he responds:

Even though their visions of the island differed, Lehane tells the Oklahoman that he was very pleased with how the film turned out:

I loved it, I mean [Scorsese] got it. He got what I was playing with and what I was trying for. And he did cinematically what I did in the language of the novel. The language of the novel is heightened in such a way that you should be aware very early that you’re reading a novel, that this is an homage to Gothics, that this is basically a book about being a book in a lot of ways.

And he made a movie about being a movie. The movie is in your face as a movie right from the beginning. You should realize very quickly you’re not in the real world, you’re in Oz.

He tells G4TV.com that Scorsese remained very true to the book because “you can’t remove anything major from the structure of Shutter Island without the entire thing collapsing. It’s just, it’s not possible. So no major elements were cut…Marty had to be pretty religious to the book while keeping it manageable. That’s why it’s over two hours long.”

In case you were hoping for a big Hollywood sequel, Lehane says on Premiere.com that “the chances of that would be as good as Gladiator 2. I don’t know you just have to ask somebody besides me. I know I’m not writing a Shutter Island 2, let me put it to you that way.”