Detention

by jamontsky

Wish I could tell you what happened in Detention. It's a deliberately scatty piece but I still had to ask other people who the murderer was. It was revealed to us and I still couldn't figure it out. Genres are joyfully blurred; just when you're settling into a sort of teen drama you realise you're in a high school slasher, sure, but then it's the drama again but they're time travelling and aliens and —

Despite being impossible to follow it's actually just really good fun. I was a little skeptical about the pretty-girl-that's-unpopular-for-no-reason trope but the writers actually end up making her believably pathetic, good enough to even circumvent her shiny hair. The dialogue is sharp and the editing is crisp; the clever thing is that Detention doesn't give you time to think about how confused you are. It whisks you along, exhausting you with no expectation that you'll keep up. I have a lot of respect for that.

It's funny because this is another Josh Hutcherson film I've accidentally watched. I just seem to happen across his films since I always forget his name, but I remember his face (mostly because we actually share a vague resemblance, which I've always found unsettling). I mean, I struggle to forgive him for Motocross Kids, which is too awful to even write about. Look at the DVD cover.

I don't mean to be dramatic but their graphic designer deserves to be lynched. But I digress, and anyway he was good in The Kids Are Alright so it's nice to see him again.

That's 2012's Detention, directed by Jospeh Kahn and starring Josh Hutcherson, Spencer Locke, Shanley Caswell and Dane Cook.