Welcome to The Weekend Watch, a weekly column focusing on a movie—new, old or somewhere in between, but out either in theaters or on a streaming service near you—worth catching on a cozy Friday night or a lazy Sunday morning. Comments welcome!
The long-awaited release of Eli Roth’s Borderlands adaptation had me thinking about a pet topic of mine: Live-action videogame movies. Films attempting to adapt another medium always have an extra layer or two to them (How do they stack up? How do they translate one form to another?) but those trying to bring the active world of gaming into the more passive, spectator-centric world of cinema always seem like they’re fighting an uphill battle. It doesn’t help that this corner of film had its warp pipe poisoned early by heinous reviews of Super Mario Bros. and those that followed in their Goomba-stomping footsteps. But if you’re willing to look past the blockbusters, and especially willing to look past the Hollywood idea of what a videogame adaptation should be, there has been a decent amount of success in turning games into films. The sole Taiwanese entry into this ignoble canon comes from writer/director John Hsu: the horror film Detention. Detention is available to stream free on Tubi, Freevee and more.
Hsu’s film is based on a subversive, humanizing 2017 game with deep ties and relevance to Taiwan. Set during the ‘60s during the decades-long period of brutal martial law known as the White Terror, imposed upon the Taiwanese by the Chinese Kuomintang party, its horror is political to its core. The follow-up game from studio Red Candle Games, Devotion, was pulled for its Easter egged mockery of Xi Jinping. Unsurprisingly for stories with such bold anti-establishment track records, the film version of Detention was not released in China on government order. In fact, when the Chinese media was reporting on its 12 nominations at the Golden Horse Awards (the highest-level Chinese-language awards body for film), they only referred to the film as “xx.” And it lives up to this rebellious reputation.
As our Holly Green wrote, it’s about Fang, a student who “is both the perpetrator and, in more than one sense, victim of the events of Detention.” Her naïve actions, in line with the oppressive government’s goal of purging dissidents, trap her (played in the movie by Gingle Wang) alongside those she’s damned. If anything, Detention’s blend of haunted high school ghost story and period-set political allegory feels like it’s following in the footsteps of Guillermo del Toro’s work exploring the Spanish Civil War through genre cinema. And yes, through understanding those affected by war as specters who linger on beyond our interactions with them, however brief.
With cinematographer Patrick Chou alternating a historical, sepia look and the washed-out surrealism of a nightmare—all set to Luming Lu’s moving and melancholy score punctuated with creeping sound effects—Detention is one of the best looking and sounding videogame adaptations out there. It’s also the straight-up scariest. Hsu almost seems like he’s showing off at some points, turning side-scrolling shots that mimic the game into sequences of escalating, inescapable tension through his impeccable framing and pace.
The faithful storytelling, full of contradictions and self-denials, helps sink the mood of paranoid terror—where you can’t even trust yourself, let alone your classmates or countrymen—deep into your bones. One of the most memorable moments from Farewell My Concubine sees the accusations and counter-accusations fly at a struggle session in the midst of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Here, a similarly oppressive mood is given the selfish, dreadful sheen of a teenage horror manga as we find ourselves cursed with Fang’s perspective. The film owes its game plenty in this regard, but we’ve seen countless adaptations fail their source’s compelling narrative (sorry Takashi Miike, but your Like a Dragon just isn’t anywhere near as good as your Ace Attorney). It’s not a given to be able to find fidelity in story, tone and aesthetic, so it’s impressive that Hsu is able to replicate something that feels like you’re sucked into the game, heart pounding in your headphoned ears late at night.
As the film continues, the spiraling consequences of a myopic, youthful act march ever onward like so many pairs of thudding jackboots. Detention’s monsters make you jump, but its humans and their all too human cruelties—naming names, torture, arrest, execution—make up the film’s most striking and lingering images. If you have nightmares from it, they will be because you see truth in its world.
As has been noted before, as our games mature and find inventive ways to integrate stories and gameplay beyond two ridiculous characters comboing each other into oblivion, or a faceless first-person shooter ridding the world of respawning alien hordes, the movies they inevitably become in our IP-hungry world will improve in turn. Good games and movies alike can be simple, but that elegance is deceptively difficult. On the flip side, complexity and depth can beget complexity and depth. But it’s not a sure thing, just as serious subject matter is never the guaranteed awards bait that studios seem to think it is. That makes it special still that Detention is such a good videogame movie that it transcends that sadly backhanded description.
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
For all the latest movie news, reviews, lists and features, follow @PasteMovies.