Directed by:
John HsuComposer:
Luming LuCast:
Gingle Wang, Chin-Hua Tseng, Cecilia Choi, Meng-Bo Fu, Moon Li, Kuan-yi Lee, Guan-Zhi Huang, Kun-Da WuPlots(1)
One spooky night, Fang (Gingle Wang) and a classmate are at their secondary school, looking into the disappearance of their friends and teachers who founded an illegal book club. Taiwan, 1962: the Chinese occupation. Political literature is strictly prohibited and its dissemination is severely punished. Wandering the creaky hallways, Fang discovers a dark secret about her role in the disappearance of her rebellious schoolmates. Taiwanese director John Hsu's feature film debut is based on the popular, eponymous video game. Detention combines a historic school drama with psychological horror to make Taiwan's repression tangible. The refreshing combination of genres, great acting – with the cast alternating between horror and drama – as well as spine-chilling sound and computer-generated effects made this the box-office smash of the year in its home country. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
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This year's first horror smash belongs to Taiwan! The story is set in 1962, where Martial Law was declared in Taiwan and people were denied their freedom, and the punishment for reading banned books was death. The whole movie takes place in a school where a boy and a girl are locked up in the middle of the night and haunted by demons (the central demon seems to have dropped out of Silent Hill and the only thing that sucks is that he wasn't given more space). The film builds more on a dreamy and chilling atmosphere, I didn't spot any scares, but thanks to decent visuals, a perfect soundtrack and an unpleasant scene with a moving light (even James Wan would have applauded here) it paces decently, and I was surprised at how mature and decent a horror film Taiwan has thrown at us, as evidenced by the very positive reactions abroad.
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Photo © Warner Bros TW
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