Detention

Taiwan in the sixties, under martial law. Teachers and students at a high school have formed a secret reading group; they read banned books and that is a crime. Fang is a student; when she wakes at the school she can find nobody. The building is empty, the corridors dark and there is no way out. She meets another student called Wei. The two begin looking for their missing friends and teachers. There are other things inside the school. As they go on it comes out why the school became this way, and who informed. John Hsu directs. Gingle Wang, Fu Meng-po and Tseng Jing-hua are in the cast. It is a Taiwanese production. The source is the computer game of the same name; the game drew great interest in Taiwan and was argued over for its historical ground. Its ground is the period known as the White Terror; tens of thousands were arrested, tried and executed. Taiwanese cinema could not treat the period for a long time. The film won awards in many categories at Taiwan's Golden Horse and took a strong result at the box office. The narrative uses the horror genre but its real source is not the supernatural; what frightens is the system of informing. The visual design comes from the game and the school is built like a labyrinth. Its limit is structure; the explanatory sections run long in the second half and the tension drops. Who it is for: viewers who like horror on political ground and Taiwanese cinema. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the ending bitter, and it stays incomplete without the historical context.