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

Something centred so closely on a small group of people in a restricted space needs very strong characters and spot-on dialogue, neither of which feature here. Also, just wondering, if the prison is deserted, how come the car-park is full?

I would like to preface this review with: it's so bad!! it's so, so bad!!! The characters and the way they interact and their dialogue is all completely unsalvageable! But I had so much fun watching this thing!! From just the scene of them getting off the bus you already know what you're in for. This one kid does the sign of the cross and hold up the line and it's really painfully awkward (and is also gay so of course his bible (which he carries everywhere) is bedazzled) and this other character (who's my personal favorite) is obviously played by someone who just barely kind of knows how to skateboard even though it's the characters whole schtick. Like if you really want to laugh just watch them in the background, it's incredible. In the bus scene they like throw down the skateboard and then pounce onto it (seriously, they tuck their legs in and everything), but you can still tell the actor didn't know what to do beyond that so you kind of see them just outside of frame bend down to pick it back up and walk. Only to, once in the hallway, put the skateboard back down by crouching instead of just, you know, dropping it, and then they proceed to skate for about six whole seconds where they get dangerously closer and closer to a wall they obviously don't know how to avoid. This is just the first five minutes. I genuinely recommend watching this horrible, horrible, horrible movie just to guess how many scenes they had to reshoot because of the skateboarding kid. Loved it.

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.

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.