Director John Hsu’s debut feature Detention features strong lead performances and dazzling visuals. But the video game source material, itself inspired by true events that took place during a period of martial law in Taiwan, divides the director’s loyalties between stylish horror and moving drama. The resulting movie looks fantastic, but it never quite comes together in its conflicted impulses.
Set in 1962 Taiwan, Detention introduces its conflict with a tense moment of student discipline. At students file by to enter Tsuihua Secondary School, Inspector Bai (Chu Hung-Chang) singles out an underclassman hiding his face behind his uniform cap; upperclassman Wei (Tseng Jing-Hua) steps in to run interference, which catches the eye of pretty senior Fang (Gingle Wang). Meanwhile, Fang has a crush on her teacher Mr. Chang (Meng Po-Fu), and when she overhears him talking to a female teacher, sets wheels in motion that get Mr. Chang in deep trouble with authorities. You see, Mr. Chang has been holding a secret book club, and Fang’s vindictiveness has unwittingly exposed this surreptitious activity—but at what cost?
The plot seems like typical high school drama, but there’s an overwhelming difference: it takes place during the period known as Taiwan’s “White Terror,” in which the Chinese Nationalist government punished dissidents with torture and murder. Detention can’t be shown in mainland China, and while the specifics of political conflict may be beyond most viewers in the west, the anxieties of growing up combined with the evils of political repression combine for horrific resonance indeed.
Hsu coaxes his cast to harrowing performances that convey at once the vulnerability of youth, the resilience of the political underground and the terror of political violence. But, according to the Taipei Times, the video game was more subtle in conveying the spirit of the times; while the game action treated politics as something to be figured out through clues, the movie establishes the politics immediately, which takes some of the edge off the historical resonance.
The script by Chien Shih-Keng, Fu Kai-Ling and John Hsu weaves in and out of dramatic elements and horror tropes, and both aspects seem to hit the right notes; but something gets lost in the competing tones; this may well be a metaphor for the divide between Taiwan and China, but it doesn’t make for a completely satisfying horror or drama. Where Detention really excels is in its visuals. Cinematographer Chou Yi-Hsien filters much of the school footage in a muted institutional green, shifting occasionally into black and white memories and a cold blue horror, roving cameras beautifully capturing institutional viciousness and individual tenderness.
High school movies typically depict the horrors of growing up with a changing and seemingly unpredictable body. Detention had the potential to take our biological development as a powerful symbol of political oppression, and the physical toll that results when governments quash dissent, especially on the young. Still, when Hsu learns to focus his sprawling talent, watch out.
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