We suspect Joseph Kahn’s Sci-fi Horror Comedy, Detention will split audiences – it’s certainly an acquired taste. Kahn’s direction is pretty full on, a heady mix of fast dialogue, captions and graphics flying across the screen, super fast abrasive editing. Detention runs along at a 100 miles an hour and the story is all over the place, but it’s directed with such conviction and style we kind of felt guilty for not keeping up. All the teen cast, Shanley Caswell, Josh Hutcherson, Spencer Locke and Aaron David Johnson are excellent, the script is inteligent (the bits we followed!) the production values throughout are really good. We’re still not entirely sure what happened – We remember something about a time travelling bear, a teenage romance, a serial killer and a kid with a telly on his arm? – but somehow it does all come together at the end.
You’ll probably know in the first 10 minutes if this is for you, but we’re glad we kept watching!
