DEADLY DETENTION (2017)

For whatever reason, blame being snowbound (or my own poor choices), it's been an ongoing marathon of haunted house flicks over here at ye old Scary Manse. Assuming you can call a creaky old house full of pet hair and beer bottles a manse. So, being the noble and giving soul that I totally am, I decided to try something else. Teen slashers are always fun, right? How can that go wrong?
Well... that's a loaded question.

To be fair, this movie is plenty of fun, I'll give it that. The basic premise is terribly clever and one I'm a little surprised I've never seen before. If you ever wondered what would happen if I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and THE BREAKFAST CLUB hooked up in a closet at a party, this is pretty close to what would pop out nine months later. A mismatched group of five teens spend a Saturday in detention, under the watchful eye of their principal. Due to a possum infestation being fumigated at their highschool, they are instead at an old, unused prison nearby. As the bodies start to pile up, they find themselves trying to escape through a series of locked doors and traps being controlled by a mysterious voice over the PA.

The premise is, as I said, very clever. The kids themselves are nicely updated stereotypes for a new age of teen life, and the actors playing them are all decent. No one's a particular standout hit, but no one was making me cringe when they opened their mouth either. The script is decent, and I appreciated that they didn't try too hard to shovel in as much "cool" teen slang as possible in a desperate bid for that sweet, sweet street cred. There's a few bits here and there that come off awkward, but there's also a few genuine chuckles to balance them out. In addition to being a clever basic premise, keeping the whole film confined to the prison is extremely clever and manages not to feel cheap or claustrophobic as they move through different parts. The prison almost feels like a character all it's own, which I guess brings the entire cast count up to... six or seven.

That is, incidentally, one of my problems with the movie. The entire premise of them trying to figure out who or what is after them would be more effective if we had a sliiightly bigger pool of suspects. I'll hazard a guess I'm not the only horror hound who will call it pretty quickly. The kills aren't even all that interesting, and the choice of which characters conveniently die off-camera bothers me just as much watching it then as it does now. Similarly, the order in which various characters are offed - and who makes it out the other side - is pretty easy to predict. This doesn't make or break a movie for me, but it's always a little disappointing. Like getting diet when you ordered a Coke, or checking your bank account after you thought you were saving money.

Looks like someone needs a nice, sharp intro to gender theory.

Unfortunately, this is partially the movie's own fault for some laziness. I understand that in a film playing off a classic teen flick, there's going to be some dependence on stereotypes. That's fine. The jokes inspired by THE BREAKFAST CLUB are worth a chuckle. The problem comes in when you cross that with certain horror tropes, such as who generally dies first in these movies. There does seem to be some conscious attempt to subvert this, ie. making the "slutty" character interesting and fairly likeable, making the jock bro aware and unhappy about how he treats people. But at the end of the day it still chooses to get lazy with it, completely undercutting any tension that occasionally tries to surface for air as it drowns in mediocrity.

Here be spoilers. Read at your own risk, or skip the italics to the end of my review. 

This movie falls into some pretty garbage tropes in terms of who they kill off first. The second I saw the group was three white, cis, straight kids, one black kid, and one queer kid, it couldn't have been any more clear who gets offed first. And, of course, they're also the only two that die offscreen, because who cares I guess? Even worse, they have a black kid get killed literally because he's injured and sacrifices himself to save the beautiful young white girl. This is what happens when you try to use stereotypes without thinking them through, or actually examining them critically. 

Here endeth the spoiling. 

This is related to another major issue that helped kill this one for me; it can't figure out what it wants to be. It alternates between aiming for extremely dark, gruesome comedy but also seems to want to be taken seriously as a slasher. The movie doesn't know whether it wants to make fun of teen tropes or embrace them fully, and the script just isn't good enough to pull it off. This is the general vibe of the whole thing from the final resolution to even the score - it's a weird, vaguely synth-esque soundtrack, as if they want to flirt with that 80s vibe the whole production has, but they're not willing to commit. There's a lot of hints of a cool, wickedly funny, stylish film lurking in here starting with the opening scene where the characters are introduced by a snapshot of their school records, but it's just not fully realized.

That said, for all my complaints, I enjoyed myself watching it. This is one I could see being fun to watch with a group, and also one that easily could find a niche as a gateway movie for teens just finding horror. It's also one where I could see the creative team going on to do bigger and better things, if they cut their teeth on a few more projects and learn to fully embrace the weird. This is horror, folks - we don't give out points for normalcy.

This movie does pass the Bechdel Test quite well, and I enjoyed the surprisingly broad range of female characters for being such a small cast.


3 out of 5

This movie is available for streaming on Netflix.