[Film Review] Detention (2019)

There can be something special about horror stories that weave imagined horrors with real-life ones.  The kind of story that chills you with ghosts and ghouls, but also turns your stomach with the despicable things that people can and have done without any need for supernatural intervention. Detention is an effective example of this, a psychological horror of characters confronting their past mistakes whilst trapped in an otherworldly location.

Detention is based on a videogame of the same name released in 2017 by Red Candle Games. It is set in the time known as The White Terror, a period of martial law and widespread oppression in Taiwan in the 1960s during which 140,000 people were imprisoned and of whom three to four thousand were executed for acts, both real and perceived, against the government. The game is 2D with elements of point-and-click, and is absolutely drenched in atmosphere as you walk around a seemingly abandoned school in a rainstorm, and the movie directed by Joh Hsu in a confident directorial debut is a very straightforward adaptation that has gained widespread acclaim in its native country. Here, like in the game, we follow Wei Chung-ting (Tseng Ching-hua) and Fang Rey-shin (Wang Ching, also known as Gingle Wang) who wake up to find that they are the only ones left in their school building and something terrible has happened.

Both have their secrets; Wei is part of a secret book club run by teacher Yin Tsui-han (Cecilia Choi) who read material banned by the government, and Fang has been developing a secret relationship with art teacher and school counsellor Chang Ming-hui (Fu Meng-po) to escape her troubled home life, and these may be the key to the unravelling mystery of what happened to their school and themselves.

The main thrust of the story here is drama rather than overtly horror, told through various flashbacks from Wei and Fang’s point of view, but that dramatic base allows us to piece together the mystery of what has happened and makes the scares of the film that are here more effective and gives them significance. Both Wang Ching and Tseng Ching-hua give excellent performances as two teens who were both trying to escape their day to day lives just as they are trying to escape the school now, Wei through the freedom of reading and Fang through the comfort she finds in her taboo relationship despite the serious risks that come with both outlets. They’re normal teens with all the desires and faults that come with that territory, but the situation they’re in makes the consequences of those faults more devastating for both them and others. The atmosphere of the abandoned school is amazing as we get indications of something horrible; teeth removed and used as dice, barred and smashed windows and doors, bloodstains and memorial notices, which all build the story. There’s a sense of repetition to certain moments in the film, almost as if this space is a kind of purgatory keeping Wei and Fang until they confront certain things.

Pursuing the pair is also a tall guard-like creature, referred to in the game as a “Lingered”, who carries a lamp and has a face consisting of a mirror. It works as both a kind of demonic exaggeration of the oppressive government presence in the school and a representation of the past that the pair need to confront, but due to some less than great CGI though they do end up looking a little silly at times. I understand why they were included, they are the primary “enemy” in the original game, but they don’t quite have the same impact. That is a very minor issue with the film though, and every other aspect more than makes up for it.

Detention is a horror-drama that manages to both chill and wrench the heart with its story of regret against a backdrop of a devastating period of history, but still has a heart of hope in both people and the possibility of freedom.

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