The Detained

Deadly Detention otherwise known as The Detained is a comedy horror following a spate of detention themed horror movies (Arguably the best being Detention of the Dead (2012) )

It tells the story of 5 students who must serve detention in an abandoned prison while their school is dealing with a rabid opossum infestation. As is the way these things go things go south quickly and it becomes a fight for survival.

The cast are your stereotypical teen characters, you have the rich kid, the bible basher, the weird girl, the jock girl and the popular but promiscuous one. Oddly enough for a bunch of unknowns they do a really quite good job and I'd love to see the majority again especially the actresses who played Lexi and Taylor.

The film is your pretty generic slasher flick with lots of running away and people picked off until the big finale revelation. The trouble is that the kills are dreadful, in fact you have to question whether their really are any since they're all camera cutaways. I really hate that nonsense, then to make it worse the structuring is weird and the movies protagonist isn't who you think it is.

If you like your slashers distinctly PG then this might be one for you. Come for the decent performances, stay for the happy Disney-like atmosphere.

The Good:

Decent cast

The Bad:

Weirdly structured

Awful deaths

The acting was terrible but it is questionable if that was from bad acting itself or terrible writing. The cliche characters are about as cartoonish as you can get and yet there is no backstory or answer to why. The one liners and talkback are cringe worthy at best. The plot was bare with no filling and you knew the killer from the beginning. Even knowing who it is, they never explained why and the event that set everything in motion or why these kids were chosen, nothing was explained but you still get the poor me speech at the end. The twists at the end were suppose to be shocking but ended up just as 'what?' All in all the only thing worth noting was the setting was decent.

Even not watching it straight through (had to take it in doses), its still embarrassing to have seen the entire thing. The very end was kind of campy-cutesie but overall the film takes itself way too seriously for having a cast of grotesque characatures glibly plodding through the cheesy screenplay of the least interesting story ever told.

So let's see, five high school teens have been naughty and go to Saturday detention in an abandoned prison (say what?). There's the conceited hottie, the athletic female jock, the manly skateboarder, the male hottie, and the gay black boy. Put them together with the school principal and some are bound to die, right? Maybe, maybe not.

I guessed who the so-called killer was about 10 minutes in. So why did I bother watching? I was hoping to see some good old fashioned horror scares, some light-hearted comedic banter, and perhaps a little skin thrown in as a bonus...but no such luck.

Is it a worthwhile watch? Nope.

The camera work and the actual look of everything was well done for a movie with what I assume was a shoestring budget. The premise is fairly simple, bit of 'Breakfast Club' in a prison attempt where the students are all hunted by an unknown assailant. And that's about all there is to the plot.

The problem is everything else. It's hard to criticize the acting because the dialogue and actions they say and do are so...juvenile and stupid that I don't think any actor would have been able to make them work. It's obvious the writers have no idea how modern teens talk or behave. They're supposedly arch-type teenagers but they're archetypes lifted from like a 2005 Nickelodeon sitcom. Nothing that happens ever has any real impact, there's no emotional connection to any of these characters because they're all sort of unbearable and annoying. There's no sense of dread or fear. It's just a group of "teens" making stupid quips as they wander around a prison until one of them supposedly dies.

I say supposedly because you never actually SEE anything that happens. Literally all the violence, if there is any, happens off screen. You never actually see what happens to a character when they're killed off. You see them being approached, a scared face, and then the scene is over and the story has moved on already.

Basically if this is a horror, comedy, and drama genre movie without any actual horror, comedy, or drama in it...then what is it? That's the feeling this movie leaves you with. It's nothing. It's not offensive really, there's just no point to watching it. It's just some fairly well shot unimaginative boring nonsense with a couple funny lines. Can't recommend it.