Detention (2011)

February 24, 2015 10:48 AM

Detention is a hyperfrenetic high school comedy / horror genre mash-up from Torque director Joseph Kahn.

The opening scene is on Youtube and is in some ways a better trailer than the official trailer.

posted by RobotHero (7 comments total)

It often gets billed as a horror comedy, but it felt to me more like a dark comedy that had some horror intrude upon it once in a while.

The day after watching it, I decided the gimmick is that each character is living in a different movie. Our main character is living in a black comedy like Heathers. Her crush is living in a lighter comedy, he's got kind of a Ferris Bueller vibe to him. And of course someone in a body-swap comedy, and the jock that's in a Cronenberg movie. Which is either a metaphor for them being kind of self-centred and wrapped up in their personal dramas or for Joseph Kahn's short attention span.
posted by RobotHero at 11:06 AM on February 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

I caught this movie during its one-week theatrical run in Chicago on a Sunday morning at like 10:30 a.m. It was me and three other guys (weirdly, they all appeared to be in their 50s), and one of them didn't last 15 minutes. I loved it and couldn't stop raving about it, but I understand how some people might not be able to take it.

I still occasionally make people watch it, though. It usually goes really well. Usually.
posted by rabbitroom at 11:39 AM on February 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I feel like I saw a thread about this movie once on the blue but I could be wrong.

I will never understand how Organik got to be in a movie. That guy has got some hustle.
posted by Hoopo at 11:43 AM on February 27, 2015

Obviously it was his excellent debate skills.
posted by RobotHero at 11:53 AM on February 27, 2015

I think Detention is really underrated on IMDb. I haven't seen Torque (and have no desire to), but Joseph Kahn is one of the leading music video directors (and given the reception to Torque and Detention, he probably won't be graduating to the big screen, a la Fincher, anytime soon).

Three movies with a similar campy, Brechtian, pop-cultural post-punk piñata style are Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Kaboom (2010), and John Dies at the End (2012).
posted by dgaicun at 4:39 PM on March 13, 2015

Previously, which includes a link to Stephen Shaviro's paean to Detention.
posted by kandinski at 6:49 PM on December 5, 2016

Well that was a crazy ride and I love it. Maybe because I was in high school in 1992.
posted by miss-lapin at 4:17 PM on August 4, 2023