Film #40 - Detention

I have to admit that I was surprised it would take so little time to find a film that was so incoherent it makes Ted look like a Syd Fields example of structure within screenplays – but here we are. With Detention – a film that’s been marketed as a horror, sits much closer to being a teen comedy and winds up in neither camp largely because it can’t stop patting itself on the back over how awesomely clever/funny it thinks it is to ever actually make any sense.

Detention comes to us from director Joseph Kahn, whose last big screen adventure was Torque, a film so maligned that even Detention itself makes a crack about how awful it is.

To his credit, Kahn has clearly put a lot of energy into this film. It comes across as both a personal labour of love and a love letter to the 90s (1992, specifically). This makes it a bit of a tricky proposition given that the teen audience it is most likely to find favour with were typically learning to walk during the time many of its most heartfelt references were actually valid. 

Although I saw it with an adult audience who were a bit savvier to Kahn’s in-jokes, in general they fell into the traps that Seth MacFarlane’s analogous love of the 1980s seem to sidestep in Family Guy (and Ted for that matter) – they are too specific and divorced from context.

And this is kind of typical of the tenor of film we’re working with in Detention – some great creative ideas that fall apart because they haven’t been thought through properly. To say that the film suffers from a case of ADD is to put it rather mildly.

Edgy - thy name is Clapton "Clapton Davis" Davis

Although the film is more correctly viewed as a teen comedy, the basic plotline does indeed come straight out of horror. Riley (Shanley Caswell) is a stereotypical outcast at high school which has seen its head bitch fall victim to a violent killer dressed as the villain of a horror franchise whose latest instalment is due to be released in cinemas shortly. Her thwarted affections for local slacker/delinquent Clapton” Clapton Davis” Davis (played as the safest JD you’ll ever meet by Josh Hutcherson), sexual harassment by school geek Sander Sanderson (Aaron David Johnson) and antagonism with new Queen Bee Ione (Spencer Locke) lead her to attempt suicide. Midway through hanging herself in the school corridor, she comes face-to-face with the serial killer and promptly gets cast in the role of Final Girl.

This may be what a feminist looks like, Riley -
but it's not how a protagonist behaves

Right there we have the crux of one of the film’s major problems. It’s central protagonist isn’t just passive, she’s completely unlikeable. In the first act there is not a single scene where Riley is not subjected to some humiliation or other, usually of the slapstick variety, and is an abject failure in every aspect of her life. 

And, if the hallmark of a protagonist is that they take action, then how can we get on board a film where the supposed protagonist attempts suicide a third of the way through?

I’m almost attempted to make some kind of Lost conspiracy theory up about Riley’s suicide attempt though, as it’s after that point that the film loses all sense whatsoever. From here we’re treated to films-within-films-within-films, body swapping stories, time travels, a Flyesque mutation subplot, alien abductions and invasion, characters changing motivation for no reason and so on.

None of these would necessarily be problematic if they somehow felt like part of a whole movie (see Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks as an example of a kitchen-sinker that still somehow maintains comprehensibility) but Kahn just doesn’t seem to interested in making the effort.

As with Ted, you must accept that each moment of the film has its own rules that don’t necessarily have anything to do with any of the others in order to make it through without going insane. Watch Riley grow a backbone for no reason, now Clapton Davis (full name only allowed!) is living in 1992 (and, of course, loving it), now the new character emerging in the detention room’s predictions of doom will be taken as gospel, now everyone respects Riley etc. etc. If it works it’s because we have no short term memory.

The cast of Detention midway through a lengthy joke
that goes nowhere

Long story short, for all its wit, Detention has no heart. So, for me at least, it can never rise above the rank of being a mere confection.

All of that said, what the hell do I know? Certainly the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy the jokes and 90s references (this was at Toronto After Dark which skews both older and hipster) and the film isn’t universally terrible.

Credit should at least be given to Kahn for keeping the movie visually interesting and some of the jokes would be witty if they were given any room to breathe.

From what I can tell Detention is already dead at the box office and, as much I hate to kick an old dog while it’s down, perhaps it's time we quietly took this puppy behind the woodshed?