Is this a good horror movie? Not that much.
Despite the great premises given by the videogame, the movie completely misses the mood. The game's refinement draws with both hands from Taiwanese folklore and buddhist aesthetics, a peculiarity that the movie sacrificed in the name of way more predictable (and out of context) 'Silent Hill' vibes. The lingered, Hei Bai Wu Chang, the ritual meaning of rice, ashes, hell money and incense, cultural elements dear to those of us who love to dive into Asian beliefs, are all lost with the adaptation; even the Lantern Specter loses his typical rice hat and turns into a generic creature for the sake of a watered down supernatural world that fails to evoke the characteristics of Eastern underworlds.
The movie also suffers from a very structural problem: while the devastating plot twist is the game's actual arrival point, the live action prefers to reveal all its cards since the beginning, letting the viewers to just watch as the story unfolds around the already known tragedy. There's no room to doubts, no mind games, no tension derived from the unknown taking shape piece by piece.

Is this a good dramatic and psychological story? The answer is yes.
Detention could be a very good historical and political movie. The real world under the rule of the White Terror is way more frightening than the actual horror elements. The sound of marching feet in the school's hallways, the rusty voice on the megaphone reminding everyone their duty to the Kuomintang, the constant fear of acting (even without knowing) against the dictatorship's common sense are well rendered: they instill an anxiety that nowadays we can understand very well, a menace way more realistic than a couple of bland jumpscares. This is a story of people fighting back without weapons, of people fighting invisible enemies: the huge hand of censorship and the demons that fragile souls may harbor in such an uncertain environment.

Overall, the movie adaptation fails to convey the folkloristic atmosphere and that sense of nostalgic helplessness that makes the game a little gem, and the allegories that tie Fang Ray Shin to the underworld are just too flavorless - if not absent at all. On the other hand, in this story the always contemporary message of freedom, of hope for the future, rings loud and clear.

Leggi di Più