The movie Detention is is based on the game, developed by Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games and released in 2017 to acclaim. First things first, I’m a huge admirer of Red Candle Games. Both of their games are exactly my style when it comes to genre — social commentary-focused horror. Their second game, Devotion, is based on the troubles and terrors of an individual family in 80’s Taiwan. It is an absolute horror masterpiece and never fails to make me cry so deeply I almost wheeze. Unfortunately the game was removed from storefronts a week after release because someone found a throw-away art asset calling the Chinese president Winnie the Pooh.

This obscene censorship of an entire game based on a small asset featuring a comparison that one guy finds offensive makes their first game, Detention, look especially relevant in retrospect. Whereas Devotion is a game obsessed with the inner workings of the family unit, Detention turns its focus towards the socio-political climate of Cold War-era Taiwan, during a period known as ’The White Terror,’ a time of government-sponsored domestic terrorism aimed at ‘rooting out’ communists. The game follows Ray, a young student at a school who, after awakening in the school after-hours, has to find a way to escape. In the process of her journey we learn of an illicit book club being operated by an instructor at the school, Miss Yi, and slowly unravel both the folklore-based horrors of the school and, more importantly, the very real state-sponsored horrors that the students in the book club faced.

This allows the game to be two things at once and really showcases why Red Candle are masters of the genre- it is at once a standard horror game featuring creepy folklore-based monsters and a commentary on censorship and state-sponsored terror. Rather than being content with saying nothing with jump-scare monsters and whatever else, Red Candle fully succeeds in blending social commentary with genuine scares (which become more deeply felt because of the social commentary).

So, yeah, Red Candle Games are great. They are great, and what’s happened to them because of a small art asset offending a guy is a travesty. This movie is an attempt to film Detention in a way that both pleases fans of the game and gets people to care about the social climate around the story. Let me run through some positives and negatives:

Positives:

It is very clear that the director, John Hsu, is a fan of the game. This is clear not just in the music, or the lantern-monster, but in the tracking shots (mimicking the side-scrolling nature of the game), in the subtle call-backs to the game’s hiding mechanic (holding your breath so the monsters don’t notice you), or in the immaculate set-design. Even smaller details like Ray’s radio playing a very specific Taiwanese oldie or the theatre ticket quest are recreated in the movie. Some of these things are 1-to-1, big ups to John Hsu for that.

Despite the closeness to the game, there are some changes/ additions here that really work. One thing I was worried about when I knew there was a movie was how are they going to do the beginning? Spoilers for the game, but Wei gets hung upside down almost immediately in the game, and you’re left with Ray alone in the school. The synopsis says it’s about the two students traversing the nightmare world, and so I figured that Wei wouldn’t die immediately, so what was he going to do? I was worried of course that this movie would become a buddy cop film as a result, with maybe a love interest story between the two leads and them growing closer through the hardship or whatever, that’s at least how a lesser group of creatives would rewrite it (or maybe STUDIO INTERFERENCE). But they really don’t go there, at all.

You see, in the original, Wei’s story ends up becoming a subplot to the main story- Ray’s budding relationship with the school counselor, Mr. Chang. We don’t get much time to see Wei’s experience discovering that he and his group have been discovered — moreover, that it’s partially his fault. The movie covers this fantastically. Absolutely fantastically. One sequence has Wei facing his old friends from the book club with them scolding him for bringing the rat. It’s actually pretty emotional watching Wei deal with the consequences of his hopeless infatuation with Ray, at one point wishing he’d never met her. Rather than becoming a buddy cop film, Wei seems to viscerally hate Ray at points, and for good reason.

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In addition, scenes that might’ve been visually cool but somewhat replaceable in the game have become focal points in the movie. My favorite of these scenes is the Wei throat cutting scene. In the game, Ray awakens in the gymnasium to find Wei’s corpse hanging from the rafters. She then has to use a razor blade to cut him open to solve a puzzle. In the movie, this scene becomes a direct analogy to the way Ray essentially kills everyone in the club. Inspector Bi says ‘hand me the book’ and extends his hand as though accepting an offering. But in his hand is a razor blade, which Ray takes and uses to cut Wei’s throat, then removing a book from the wound. It’s all very horrifying, but it takes what was a puzzle solving scene to a more meaningful one with only a few changes.

Speaking of those changes, another one is the movie goes further than the game when it comes to the cruelty shown to the members of the book club. The movie isn’t afraid to talk about their sentences and show what happened to all of the members of the club. Ray has to face this directly, there is no ‘oh this person escaped and became an international activist’ or whatever. The people in this club got tortured and killed.

Some of the cinematography here is just really pretty. This is especially clear in any scene in an auditorium. If there’s an auditorium, there’s going to be some creepy, horrifying but goddamn cool imagery and it’ll be great. The set design is incredible, and really captures the spirit of the game. Also fantastic soundtrack. It’s creepy, jumpy, emotional — all the things you need a soundtrack to be.

I want to take a quick moment before the negatives to talk about the plot itself. Devotion hits pretty hard because I’m pretty sensitive about harm to kids. Detention hits hard because I’m also pretty sensitive about freedom of speech and expression. I just want to say that there is profound courage in groups like the reading group featured in this game/ movie. To take part in an activity considered seditious to the state, under a government that will kill you for reading, it just, it’s really courageous is I guess the best way to say it. Situations like this were and are a horrifying reality for many people across the world. But for many, the act of thinking freely, of reading materials considered seditious so that you might experience the freshness of encountering new, bold ideas is so essential to their beings that they’d risk death for that feeling. It’s very admirable. Lots of people, lots lots lots of people like to think they’d be this courageous in a situation like this, but you need to drop that facade to realize how remarkable it is that people would have this kind of spiritual fortitude.

Negatives:

1. I’ve seen some criticism of the game regarding the relationship between Ray and the counselor. I don’t really know whether to agree with that or not — not because I think it’s morally grey (I don’t), but because I don’t know which side the game is coming down on. The teacher Ms. Yi essentially voices all of our concerns in the game — this relationship is inappropriate, this is dangerous, what the fuck are you doing, yadda yadda, and she does a little of that here, but there’s also a lot of sweet scenes between the teacher and Ray, which are less sweet and more creepy. I DO think the movie comes down a bit too much on the ‘wow what a tragic romance’ side compared to the game at least.

2. Some of the CGI is pretty weak. Really, it’s not a deal breaker, but it makes me wish they’d just gone ahead and shown less of the monsters. That, or they could’ve designed them in such a way where the CG didn’t have to do so much work, because it really didn’t pull it off.

All of this said, and this review done, I do want to end by saying Red Candle Games deserve so, so, so much more than they’ve gotten in life. Detention is a fantastic, hard-hitting horror game that defined their style, but their second game, Devotion, is all of that and then some. They are the greatest creators in the space they occupy, I firmly believe that. The hole that Team Silent left in my heart has been filled by Red Candle, and I hope so very deeply that they’ll be back soon.

Screenshots

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