Detention of the Dead

Having run into a swarm of questionable and dubious low-budget zombie movies the last couple of months, I really had no particular high hopes for "Detention of the Dead", but I was genuinely surprised.

The movie starts out well enough and drops the action right in your lap almost right away. I enjoyed that and it was great not having to sit 30 or 45 minutes into the movie before action starts to happen and the movie to pick up pace. "Detention of the Dead" starts off in a high gear and keeps going at that pace.

"Detention of the Dead" has a good amount of comedy to it to make it a worthy addition to the genre where you would find "Shaun of the Dead". While it is not as classic as "Shaun of the Dead", "Detention of the Dead" does manage to leave a good mark on the zombie comedy genre.

The effects in the movie were nice, though not as gory and detailed as that in George Romero movies or "The Walking Dead". But still, for a movie of this type and budget, then the effects and make-up was quite alright.

The characters in the movie were nicely detailed and equally well performed by the people hired for the various roles.

Story-wise, then the movie didn't really bring anything new to the zombie genre. But still, it managed to take already established lore in the zombie genre and put it to good use. There were some nice enough, although cheesy, references to be seen here and there, so stay alert.

"Detention of the Dead" is a good addition to the zombie movie library of any zombie aficionado.

A group of oddball high school students find themselves trapped in detention with their classmates having turned into a horde of Zombies.

This is not necessarily a good film, and it is not a surprise to me that the movie has generally low reviews on IMDb. A bit lower than I expected, but maybe it just has not hit the target audience yet. Although, there is a bit too much down time between the jokes to really keep the momentum going, and some of the events go past parody or homage to downright theft (the "Breakfast Club" ripoff where they each explain why they have detention in particular).

This might fall under the category of guilty pleasures, though, for zombie and horror fans. There are countless references, and I am sure I did not catch them all: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead, Twilight and Rocky Horror Picture Show come to mind. There is an homage to Sam Raimi's directing style, the library is named after effects guru Tom Savini... and in one piece of dialogue, two characters mention all the ways that a zombie outbreak has begun in other films.

This may not be a keeper, but it is definitely worth renting for those who like clever references to other horror flicks. (Or sometimes not so clever -- the Savini reference got a bit too much screen time to be subtle.)

This movie is really not too bad , its funny and acted pretty decent , its supposed to be not taken too 'serious'. All in all I had a great time watching it , it has a mix of high school students all in detention together , a geek , a Gothic chick , the prom queen and king and a couple a stoners , as the zombieness breaks out. The comedy is pretty stupid but that's what makes it so funny . Don't get the rating been so low , only 3.9 ? I have definitely saw worse zombie movies on bigger budgets than this. I give it 6/10 and look forward to seeing it again.

don't go buy the rating !! This really is worth watching !!

This is passable harmless fun, but it's so harmless it's barely worth watching. The characters are the most cardboard cut out of cliches, the story beats the same. The zombie genre is so saturated now that films like this just don't need to be made. See it if you love to watch all zombie movies, the good the bad, and the boring vanilla, but don't expect anything you haven't seen a hundred times before.

An eclectic group of high-school teens in detention—cheerleader Janet (Christa B. Allen) and her boyfriend Brad (Jayson Blair), geek Eddie (Jacob Zachar), pretty goth Willow (Alexa Nikolas), jock Jimmy (Max Adler), and stoner Ash (Justin Chon)—find themselves trapped in the school library after a zombie outbreak turns all of their classmates into ravenous gutmunchers.

Detention of the Dead is harmless enough fun, but in a world where a new zombie film seems to claw its way to the surface on a daily basis, it simply doesn't do enough to distinguish itself from the competition. The characters are all stereotypes—although that's forgivable given that the film is clearly inspired in part by The Breakfast Club—but for Detention of the Dead to have been really successful, it would have needed far better gags, a few genuine scares, and much more creative zombie mayhem. I'd liked to have seen director Alex Craig Mann really go to town with the splatter, but then again, maybe the budget for such carnage just wasn't available.

I rate Detention of the Dead a passable 5 out of 10, although I was tempted to deduct a point for the obvious in-jokes, most notably the characters named after classics of the genre, something that has been done to death in comedy horror films over the years (the library is named after make-up legend Tom Savini; Brad, Janet and Eddie are all characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Willow is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Ash is, of course, from The Evil Dead; admittedly, I haven't the foggiest who Jimmy is named after).