Detention
Year: 2020
Created by: Su I-Hsuan, Chuang Shiang-An & Liu Yi
Starring: Huang Guan-Zhi, Li Ling-Wei, Han Ning & Jack Yao
Episodes: 8 (1 Series)
BBFC: 15
Published: 12/01/21
Created by: Su I-Hsuan, Chuang Shiang-An & Liu Yi
Starring: Huang Guan-Zhi, Li Ling-Wei, Han Ning & Jack Yao
Episodes: 8 (1 Series)
BBFC: 15
Published: 12/01/21
Asian horror is a subgenre that I’ve always enjoyed more than western horror and it all comes down to the creativity behind the story, and slow building suspenseful horror that always tends to leave an impact with me. Some of my favourite horror stories of all time are Silent Hill and The Ring, but there are countless other Asian horror stories I also love. So, it seemed then that when I started Netflix’s Detention, an adaptation of the 2017 video game and 2019 film of the same name, I was excited to see how a horror story about the ghosts of Taiwan’s troubled history would play out.
For the sake of context let’s do a little real-world history. Between the 19th May 1949 – 15th July 1987 Taiwan was placed under martial law commonly referred to as the ‘White Terror’. It began following WWII when China was given control of Taiwan, in reaction to this as well as the increased aggression used by the authorities a mass demonstration took place on the 28th February 1947. In retaliation the government and authorities massacred protestors which led to an estimated 28,000 civilian deaths.
During this period of White Terror, thousands of Taiwanese citizens went missing or were executed for not following strict guidelines.
Detention takes place in 1999. Liu Yun-Xiang has transferred to Greenwood High School due to her mother’s insistence on her getting higher grades in the hopes that it will convince her father to re-join the family as he is permanently away on “business”.
For the past thirty years Greenwood High School has been a beacon of discipline and respect in the community, with ex-soldier Instructor Pai as head of discipline. However just under thirty years ago a young girl, Fang Rui-Xin, committed suicide by throwing herself off of one of the school’s buildings. When Liu Yun-Xiang discovers a necklace that belonged to Fang Rui-Xin history begins to repeat itself as Rui-Xin exacts revenge on those responsible for her untimely demise.
For the sake of context let’s do a little real-world history. Between the 19th May 1949 – 15th July 1987 Taiwan was placed under martial law commonly referred to as the ‘White Terror’. It began following WWII when China was given control of Taiwan, in reaction to this as well as the increased aggression used by the authorities a mass demonstration took place on the 28th February 1947. In retaliation the government and authorities massacred protestors which led to an estimated 28,000 civilian deaths.
During this period of White Terror, thousands of Taiwanese citizens went missing or were executed for not following strict guidelines.
Detention takes place in 1999. Liu Yun-Xiang has transferred to Greenwood High School due to her mother’s insistence on her getting higher grades in the hopes that it will convince her father to re-join the family as he is permanently away on “business”.
For the past thirty years Greenwood High School has been a beacon of discipline and respect in the community, with ex-soldier Instructor Pai as head of discipline. However just under thirty years ago a young girl, Fang Rui-Xin, committed suicide by throwing herself off of one of the school’s buildings. When Liu Yun-Xiang discovers a necklace that belonged to Fang Rui-Xin history begins to repeat itself as Rui-Xin exacts revenge on those responsible for her untimely demise.
Detention’s story is not the easiest to follow. Whilst the central plot of Liu Yun-Xiang and Fang Rui-Xin is easy to understand and keep on top of there are a lot of characters that exist in the peripheries that are either important in the first episode or so before we even know who they are, or don’t play a particularly big role until much later on but we know almost nothing about them. There’s also a lot of stuff that happens that doesn’t really impact anything. It’s nice character building but it also seems like a waste of time because the central plot does enough character building on its own, and generally is far more interesting than stuff that’s happening outside of that central conflict.
My favourite aspect of the whole series was Liu Yun-Xiang’s relationship with one of her teachers, the headmaster’s son Shen Hua. It was really interesting seeing this relationship blossom and turn sour once people begin to become aware of it. As terrible as this is going to sound, it was a great way of depicting child abuse. It gave the audience all of the emotional highs and lows involved but didn’t glamourise the situation and revealed just how dangerous such a thing can be once things did start to fall apart between them.
I feel the promotional material and genre categorisation was also very misleading. Detention is not a horror. It definitely deals with themes of horror such as ghosts and the very occasional jump scare (I think there were three in the shows eight episode run), but the series is definitely just an exploration of the themes of the period of White Terror Taiwan experienced. As such I came away from Detention disappointed because it was absolutely not what the trailer presented. I don’t really know who this show is even for when I think about it, because horror fans will be disappointed by how not scary it is. Then people looking for an interesting drama will also be kind of underwhelmed because so much of the secondary stories and characters are just underdeveloped.
So whilst the central story to Detention is good, I struggle to recommend watching the show unless you’re a die-hard fan of the game or film the show is based on.
My favourite aspect of the whole series was Liu Yun-Xiang’s relationship with one of her teachers, the headmaster’s son Shen Hua. It was really interesting seeing this relationship blossom and turn sour once people begin to become aware of it. As terrible as this is going to sound, it was a great way of depicting child abuse. It gave the audience all of the emotional highs and lows involved but didn’t glamourise the situation and revealed just how dangerous such a thing can be once things did start to fall apart between them.
I feel the promotional material and genre categorisation was also very misleading. Detention is not a horror. It definitely deals with themes of horror such as ghosts and the very occasional jump scare (I think there were three in the shows eight episode run), but the series is definitely just an exploration of the themes of the period of White Terror Taiwan experienced. As such I came away from Detention disappointed because it was absolutely not what the trailer presented. I don’t really know who this show is even for when I think about it, because horror fans will be disappointed by how not scary it is. Then people looking for an interesting drama will also be kind of underwhelmed because so much of the secondary stories and characters are just underdeveloped.
So whilst the central story to Detention is good, I struggle to recommend watching the show unless you’re a die-hard fan of the game or film the show is based on.