FANTASIA 2020: Detention (返校)
fantasiaJohn Hsu's Detention is filled with eerie and horror-inspired iconography, and though its overly convoluted storytelling often gets in the way, it remains a stellar and genuinely unnerving feature.
The first thing to note is the sequences of undeniably effective scenes. What begins as a political drama during a Cold War paranoid Taiwan, soon descends into a horror-fuelled nightmare. The scares, especially via specific characteristics showcased in the film, are del Toro-esque designs of visual torment. The production design from Chih-cheng Wang wholeheartedly echoes the horror sentiment; in each scene, the way cinematographer Yi-Hsien Chou crafts the crippling claustrophobic and brooding setting makes the film is tantalisingly nightmarish to witness.
The emotive pain is expertly crafted in exciting visuals to convey the years of paranoia and internal destructiveness, without having to use on -the-nose spoken exposition. Granted, the film does have to express itself in an on-the-nose style on more than one occasion. However, said technique is purely due to how the narrative is constructed, in a jarring and chopping fashion, rather than because of laziness to convey the plot.
That being said, the edit from Meng-Ju Shieh does little to help the cohesiveness of narrative. Often than not, how the film jumps between reality and purgatory, as well as the past and what is the present, it loses both momentum and engagement potential. The visual element is here in spades for the viewer never to be lost entirely. The performance of Gingle Wang as Fang Ray-Shinm, of whom the film centres on, is engaging and mysterious enough to be compelling for the audience not to feel as if the film is monotonous.
Nevertheless, John Hsu's Detention is a wonderfully gothic endeavour. With a strong performance from Gingle Wang, and an effectively astute production design from Chih-cheng Wang, Detention is one to watch for horror aficionados. However, there is no doubt that the film can never quite convict on its parallel stories with enough interest.
