IMDb RATING
6.6/10
4.2K
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In 1962 Taiwan, student Fang and teacher Mr. Chang fall in love amidst the restrictive White Terror period banning sensitive books. Despite this, Mr. Chang secretly organizes a banned book s... Read allIn 1962 Taiwan, student Fang and teacher Mr. Chang fall in love amidst the restrictive White Terror period banning sensitive books. Despite this, Mr. Chang secretly organizes a banned book study group with fellow teacher and student.In 1962 Taiwan, student Fang and teacher Mr. Chang fall in love amidst the restrictive White Terror period banning sensitive books. Despite this, Mr. Chang secretly organizes a banned book study group with fellow teacher and student.
- Awards
- 13 wins & 20 nominations total
Jing-Hua Tseng
- Wei Chong-Ting
- (as Chin-Hua Tseng)
Pen-yu Chang
- Fang's Mother
- (as Jessie Chang)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
The story is a tragedy during Taiwanese white terror period.(1949-1991) During this period the freedom of assembly and association are strictly forbidden. In this film, many people are sentenced to death for the reasons which are considered far from crimes today. The budget of this movie is less than 3 million US dollar. However the quality of this movie is much way better than it's cost. Good script. Good casting. Good directing. Good sound design. Good scoring. And excellent production design! Especially it was adapted from a computer game with the same title "Detention". It is very hard to adapt a computer game to a film, but they made it! Though the story still has some pacing problems, it's still an excellent work with this budget. I enjoyed this film very much.
Considering its original game, adaptation was so smoothly done.
Not considering its original game, the way that this plot go is so brilliant!!
It perfactlly illustrated the society in the 60s in Taiwan. Most importantly, the government portraited in the film showed the value of democracy. People gone through all of the painful past only for a better world, the world with freedom. The film is categorized as a horror movie, it doesn't have a lot of jumping or sudden scenes that scares you. However, it's about Taiwanese's inner fear for the era that's full of pain and easily forgotten by people. The era can be known as Taiwan's darkest era, Detention, however, reminds Taiwanese their darkest era, which leads to the greatest fear within the society. The whole film is covered by horror, perhaps it's a little bit confusing, but the director used smart tricks to convey the horror to us. From all the elements above, Detention is an outstanding film, and it should be watched by all Taiwaneses. By the way, people should never forgot the painful history, it showed the greatness of the modern world, and for the people who sacrificed for the democracy nowadays, should be remembered forever.
The movie shows what Taiwan was like back when KMT government refused to give citizens the rights of freedom, as a Taiwanese I'm so grateful that Taiwan now is a liberal and democratic country, thank you "Detention" for showing me how precious freedom is.
It's a very smart try to make it a horror movie which grasp the core of political metaphors. This movie means a lot more than the acting skills or the use of frame, color etc. It's difficult to talk about it in mainland China but it doesn't mean that we don't know it or we don't care. Also if one day we could watch a feature which is more mature, it may be better.
Did you know
- TriviaThe film is adapted from a video game by the same name created by Red Candle Games, a Taiwanese game developer. The same company has been involved in a political controversy surrounding alleged sacasm targeting Chinese president Xi Jinping in another horror game it created, /Devotion/ ("Huanyuan"). A proof of such allegation is an inconspicuous reference to Winnie the Pooh ("Xiaoxiong Weini"), an unwelcomed nickname for the Chinese leader, in the game, which is concealed in esoteric seal characters.
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Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $1,687,554
- Runtime1 hour 42 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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