Detention (2019)

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.

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Last night, I think I watched this film in the most perfect possible time to watch a horror movie.
I caught flu, it was heavy rain, probably something to do with Herman storm cmiiw, then I turn off the light in my bedroom and left the window opened, the thunder sounds so clear and it's cold, so i put on jacket to balance the temperature and finally watched it.

Basically about a bookclub who reads banned books in a strict era of Taiwan's martial law era, then one day because of a simp, they messed up. They could make this story as torture porn but they pursue the supernatural, psychological horror way and I like it.

I love how this film goes, the nightmare realm was so dark, strange, decayed and serve something feels like dark fantasy with the ghost that much more like a monster.
There's a flashback to normal realm, this is when they tried to gather pieces of memory and let us know what's actually happened, even though to be frank, the story is so predictable but the way they craft it in strange horror way is what made me keep watch it.

Despite the predictability, I love the nightmare segment, would love to watch something strange like that in other film.

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Great vibes and story, but needs more

I felt like the allegory here was really captivating and I actually loved the entire vibe of the movie — I know there have been complaints about the CGI and VFX but I had no issue with it; it actually fit in with the vibe of the movie really well.

I really liked the theme of betrayal as well, but for some reason, I felt like it didn't really have the same impact that it tried to have. I kind of have mixed feelings about the dual timeline style — I did like how things were revealed later on, but the way it also played out also seemed to dull some of the power of the reveals.

I don't love the plot itself and how social/political decisions were partly romance-driven; it always seems to cheapen plot developments to me.

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