Not to be confused with the 2011 film Detention starring Josh Hutcherson that is borderline unwatchable. Content warning: blood, executions ( hanging, gunshot), suicide, domestic violence (off-screen)Wei Chung-ting (Tseng Ching-hua) finds himself trapped in a recurring dream while being tortured by the Chinese regime in Taiwan. His school had been secretly copying banned books and someone dimed them out to the authorities. Wei must discover what happened while avoiding the monsters roaming the halls of his school.
I was a little worried I wasn't going to get my yearly dose of Asian horror. We're coming up on the end of the month, after all, and pickings have been fairly slim this year but Taiwan delivered with this nasty little cautionary tale about authoritarianism. You don't really even need the ghosts to make it effective, although one could make the argument that the ghosts are needed to keep it from being a little too effective. For that, you're going to want to skip straight to The Act of Killing. But instead of making ourselves depressed, let's just focus on the ghost story.
Apparently this is based on a video game. Which is fucking wild. Parts of it do feel like gameplay, especially some of the hallway scenes, but just the concept of turning your national tragedy into a video game is crazy to me.
Anyway, this is streaming on The Criterion Channel or on Tubi for free. Choose wisely.
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