Detention (I) (2010) User Reviews

Pretty bad.

[poolandrews · 3/10 · 25 November 2010]

Detention starts in 1976 at Reseda High School late one night where a group of teenagers have broken in, in an effort to scare Gabriel (Gregory Mikurak) off his girlfriend Diane (Catherine Combs) one guy named Jack (Billy Aaron Brown) tricks Gabriel into getting in a furnace which ignites after a freak lightening bolt & incinerates poor Gabriel. Jump forward to the 'Present Day' where it's the day of a big football game & everyone from Reseda High is going, except for those unlucky seven students who all have to stay behind for detention. As detention starts a thunder storm outside rages, heavy rain & lightening trap the few remaining students & teacher's inside the school. With the phone lines down & the entire school locked down the students quickly find themselves being killed off by the vengeful spirit of Gabriel who wants revenge for his brutal death with the lives of the children of those responsible...

Directed by James D.R. Hickox this is a pretty awful low budget supernatural horror film with a strong element of teen slasher thrown in there, Detention is really quite bad on any level you care to choose. I will start by commenting on the positive aspects of Detention, it only lasts for 80 minutes. That's it for positives. Now the negatives, of which there are many. On a conceptually level Detention needed more work, the idea that a bunch of kids are being punished for their parents past sins isn't new is it (A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) anyone?)? The idea of some killer ghost slicing up annoying American teens is as uninspired as they come & Detention doesn't add anything to the mix & in fact messes up any attempt at tension, shock or surprise. The twist ending is ludicrous & makes zero sense, so the whole idea of who the actual killer ghost was is turned on it's head but when the last two teens say they can't see Gabriel & that he was imaginary how did the entire class of seven students see him earlier in the film? Who or what was that black cloud thing flying around? Who took the the mobile phones from the drawer? Why was Miss Cipher seemingly possessed considering the twist end? It makes no sense when you think about it. Are we to understand that ghost's can now apply for & get teaching jobs? Who killed the Coach? Was that thin kid possessed or did he just go mental? Who put those images of the kids parents on the computer screen for them to see? Who put that girls body on the stairs with the sword sticking out so that guy could use it at the end? Nothing here gels together, there's one contradiction after another that just doesn't make sense & leaves you annoyed that you bothered watching it. Besides a very muddled supernatural ghost story that has more holes than something with lots of holes Detention is at heart a teen slasher with a bunch of clichéd American teens (the goth, the pretty rich bitch, the black guy with attitude, the final blonde girl & her loyal boyfriend) walking around lots of dark corridors for no apparent reason getting killed off. There are only about three corridors in the film & about four rooms despite an entire high school to choose from & the significance of the thunder & lightening is never explained either.

The lighting levels in Detention are noticeably off, whenever it cuts to an outside shot there are dark black clouds but it is surprisingly light inside the school despite the electricity having been cut off so there would be no lights. Also at the very end as the last two teens leave the school after their ordeal the grass & pavement is dry yet it had been raining for the entire film prior to that point & the reason they were trapped was stated to be because of flooding. A badly made & sloppy film all round with forgettable visuals & some truly terrible computer effects, the fire & ghost effects are embarrassingly bad. This thing doesn't even deliver on the gore, all of the death's occur off screen, there's a bit of blood splatter but no proper gore effects or memorable kills.

The IMDb says Detention had a budget of about $2,150,000 which is amazingly high considering the cruddy film that got made for it, although shot & completed in 2008 this remained unreleased until 2010 where it apparently earned a paltry $190 at the US box-office. The late David Carradine has a small role, he also gets an 'In Memory of' credit just before the end credits roll. The rest of the cast are bland although there are one or two nice looking girls here but that doesn't make it any more watchable.

Detention is a really bad supernatural teen slasher horror film that fails miserably on all counts, the makers seemed to have forgotten about the scares & gore as there aren't any while the plot & intended twist's makes little sense. Even running less than 80 minutes this is a real chore to sit through.

Why Didn't I See the Soccer Game on TV Instead?

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 4 August 2011]

In the 70's, the teenager Gabriel is bullied by his high school mates that play a prank and lock him in an incinerator. There is a storm and a thunder burns him to death.

In the present days, seven high school students are punished with detention after the class and they are locked by the Coach Littick (Thomas Calabro) in a classroom. Mr. Littick vanishes and they are haunted by ghosts in the corridor a stormy afternoon. Three of them manage to escape and meet the new history teacher Ms. Cipher (Alexa Jago) in the corridor. She calls the Sheriff that tells that they are trapped in the area and must wait for help. They go to the library with Ms. Ciper but sooner they are hunted down by the ghost of Gabriel and learn that their parents were the responsible for the fate of Gabriel.

"Detention" is a annoying slasher, with poor special effects and a story full of clichés. There is an excessive use of sound expecting to make the viewer scary but that only irritates. In the end, I regret that I did not see the soccer game on television instead. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Detenção" ("Detention")

What the Heck????

[roseybaby63-59-43149 · 3/10 · 24 April 2012]

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. The premise sounded promising enough. What's not to like about teenagers being hunted down and killed by a ghost? Sadly, this movie answers that question.

The story starts out with a guy being locked and left in an incinerator at the high school. A bolt of lightning somehow causes him to be burned alive. That seemed like a decent set up. Then we cut to present day, some 30 odd years later. The whole school is going to some big game except for seven teens who have detention, the assistant coach, I think and the new teacher. A huge storm hits and it's raining and there's lightning and they become trapped int he school because of flooding. It appears that the ghost of the guy who died is taking revenge by killing the kids of those who caused his death.

Even with all this set up, cliché or not, the movie never lives up to any potential it might have had. The build up is slow and doesn't really build up to anything significant. The deaths happen off screen, so there's not even some nice, gory effects. The whole thing becomes muddled, especially when you get to the 'twist' ending. None of it ends up making sense. There's no consistency or flow. There's too many questions as well. Why were bodies moved around? Who moved them? What the heck???? The ending is ridiculous and contradicts the set up.

The only reason I gave this a 3 is because I rather enjoyed when the one character goes crazy...or is possessed??? I just don't know. When the guy goes off the deep end, it's like he's channeling a dark and scary Jim Carey. That amused me greatly and was, I think, the best part of the whole movie. All I can say is I'm glad I didn't pay to see this.

Holy awful

[chefy68 · 1/10 · 20 February 2012]

While I dig the craptastic horror genre for being entertaining, this movie does nothing. It makes no sense, has horrible special effects, terrible acting, crappy wardrobe, and some of the worst editing I have ever seen.

The first scene showing the nerd being flamed in an incinerator was just plain bad, and the effects never get better. From the fake lightning to the lighting from nowhere when there is no power in the school screams crap.

Editing... quite early on the scene in the basement with the 2 maintenance guys, over the scene, the old guy puts on his gloves like 3 times during the conversation. Things like this occur all the way to the end when the last survivors are outside after a nights total downpour and the ground is totally dry.

David Carradine's coat he wears fits him like something a homeless man would wear because it's all he could find in a garbage can, and I won't go into his hair.

The story itself makes no sense, and jumps from theory to theory with nothing tying anything to anything.

Bottom line, I like bad movies at times. This one was the worst thing I have seen, a complete waste of time. How they had a 2M budget is beyond me. Must have gone towards blow and hookers for the guy who made it... Sad piece of wasted film.

Plain Terrible

[rodolphefleury-182-126991 · 1/10 · 11 December 2011]

I watched this really crap film cos I thought I was watching Detention (2011), quickly I realized it was another film and I carry on watching cos I like bad movies and I wanted to know how worse it could get and how it ended). I should have fall asleep or listen to chalk on a blackboard instead.

I mean like Z and B movies, I like bad movies (like the prom ball zombie film), I like trashy films, I like John Waters, Twilight, even Batman and Robin, but this is not even good bad, it's just a waste of time, the special effects are terrible, the acting is not bad enough to be funny. It's neither scary or gory, there's some action and screaming that's it.

David Carradine does not have any purpose here, the story is confusing only because it does not make any sense (badly constructed plot: there's a ghost but the mum is also killing, there's a psychopath but is he really being manipulated by the ghost of Gabriel?), the characters are badly written (the psychopath, wtf), you can believe a second in the character of Gabriel's mother. This is a completely waste of time, I'd rather watch Undefeatable a trillion time than go through Detention again.

Terrible...just really, really terrible!!!

[andell · 1/10 · 4 June 2012]

Okay, so I'm thankful I didn't pay to see this film, because it is an absolute abomination for so many reasons.

The film revolves around quest for revenge: a young man was burned alive during a prank. As we find out later, his Mother offed herself following his demise just a few short weeks after he died...and she's royally ticked that the school didn't also commemorate her death as well, but that's another matter.

Somehow the children of the original kids that killed him wind up in detention, along with a nerdish straggler and a new teacher. And then, one by one, the group gets peeled away while they are stranded in the school, and killed off.

It's best not to think about the impracticalities that this film raises...like the fact that these kids (the children of the original ones responsible for the prank accident) are all the same age, their parents live in the same communities, and they all happened to get detention on the exact same day as the new teacher (guess who that turns out to be) starts.

The strangest thing is that people start seeing ghosts and suspecting the supernatural is at work, but when some of the students (namely the nerdish straggler) act strangely, no one really puts two and two together.

The straggler is possessed...and when he attacks the "hero" and "heroine," he is hit with a fire extinguisher, which ends the threat he poses. So then, what does the heroine do to the defenceless boy? She pulverizes him with the fire extinguisher until it's pretty obvious that she finished the job.

There are all kinds of ropes...they could've tied him up...but alas, she decides that killing him while he's unconscious is the way to go. I mean, WTF???

Others have mentioned the CGI, and they are right. The ghost scenes reminded me of the film "Ghost," although keep in mind that that film was 20 years old when this one was made...it's about as silly as it would've been if James Cameron had used the visual effects from "Raise the Titanic" for his film "Titanic!" The burning scene at the beginning was especially cringe worthy...not gross, not just bad...but unforgivably bad! I'm sure there are grade school kids who play on the computer who could've come up with something better than what was passed off there.

My advice: this would make a good film to watch before seeing the cheesy, terrible film "Battleship"...if you see this one first, the CGI in "Battleship" will likely blow you away!

Nerd incinerated. Ghost wants revenge.

[Someguysomwhere · 3/10 · 17 November 2010]

Lame horror effort of the trapped-in-a-building-with-something- that-wants-to-kill-me type. In this instance the building is a school; the trapped are students who were serving detention; and the something is the ghost of some nerd who was locked in an incinerator by the parents of said students some years ago as a prank, and as well: to get even with him for hanging out with the lead prankster's girlfriend.

This movie is amateurishly done. Ah hell, let me just say it. IT'S A STUPID MOVIE! Why? ---Because the writing and directing is lousy. Have you ever had food from a restaurant or some take-out place that was really bad? Just some sloppy, greasy, tasteless mess, perhaps? And you wonder if the restaurant people are really that incompetent or is it that they don't care enough about what they do? About you? I kinda had that feeling a bit with this movie. When anyone gives or serves you anything and it's crap, you have 2 options: to believe they don't know any better, or to believe they do, but just don't care enough about you or what they do.

"That they don't know any better" is probably true for the young people in this movie who came off as annoying and unlikable to me. But realistically you can't blame them since they're just mouthing and doing what an incompetent writer and director has told them. Put yourself in their place; young, inexperienced, needing the job and/or the opportunity. Someone comes along and shows them a script. What're they gonna say? "This is so, so, stupid! And I'm so, so, not doing it?" --Of course not! They're trusting (and perhaps even hoping) that these people are professionals and know what they're doing. --Besides, David Carradine is in it, a seasoned actoooor. So they might have been impressed; figured if he's doing this sh*t, who're they to turn their noses up and say: "This is so, so, stupid! And I'm so, so, not doing it." Love, Boloxxxi.

"Deletion"

[maciejmaciejewski1980 · 1/10 · 9 May 2010]

If there was "zero" - i'd give it. Definitely I will remember it as one of the worst I've ever seen. Very simple plot made by mixing others. In one sentence: "Ghost of accidentally killed boy comes back after 30 years and revenges..." - I was excited by such plots when I was 8 or 10 maybe - and really there's nothing else: no sense, no reflections, no aim. In 2010 one can expect better special effects than shaking heads and a lot of darkness to cover imperfections. Scary movie? - not in any possible way, "scooby doo" is more scary. This movie should be an example what to do to avoid making a serious faux pas in directory and scenario.

Yawn.

[luvmycat · 1/10 · 23 April 2011]

What a cheap-looking, stupid film. I thought it was made in the late 70s/early 80s, from the look of it, and I don't mean it as a compliment. I was surprised and disgusted finding out afterwards that this film was made in 2008 for 2 Mio and couldn't come up with anything better. They saved enough money on the actors and effects, so where has all the dough gone?

D. Carradine, what hast thou done?

I can't believe I thought after watching this "jeeez, Birdemic was more entertaining". That says everything.

Detention doesn't come near to be honored with the word "trash", nor is it "so bad it's good". It's not even a homage to the 70s/80s teen slashers.

Sorry I can't be bothered to detail the content. I'm too angry. And my fellow reviewers have already done a good job on this.

Detention bored me to tears but also annoyed me. Stupidity throughout - script, dialog, everything. I expect characters in these kind of flicks to be acting "stupid" (you know, the usual in these type of films - like saying hello who's there in a dark lonely room, opening a door you know better you shouldn't, etc.) but not so retarded. I actually got up inbetween to wash the dishes while watching so my life time wasn't wasted completely.

I'm happy it was a cheap rental. I only made it till the end so I could live to tell. If you want to get rid of a "friend", recommend him/her this film.

Go and watch Dance of the Dead, which also covers the cliché teens (okay, they're slashed by Zombies and not a ghost). That film is silly, but funny and dimensions better in so many ways than Detention.

Fails on every level

[Wizard-8 · 29 June 2012]

"Detention" has been touted as one of the last movies David Carradine appeared in. However, fans of Carradine (that is, if there are any after appearing in a long unbroken string of awful movies prior to this one) should know that he only has about three brief scenes in the entire movies, which don't look like they took long for the director to film. And while his appearance is brief, he manages to be incredibly awful in his role. In fact, the whole movie is awful. It's wretchedly photographed and lit, with ugly and dark colors appearing throughout. The characters are uniformly written to be no more than clichés, and obnoxious clichés to boot. They are so dumb, they don't even think of going to the school's emergency exits to escape! And the special effects mostly consist of cheap CGI that looks like it was made by a high school student on his home computer. I would bet that the people who worked in front of and behind the camera did not subsequently list this movie on their resumes.

just a Bad Bad Movie, not Good Bad

[Ashman711711 · 2/10 · 10 May 2012]

the two stars is because I'm feeling kind. I first wanted to watch this from seeing a preview where it looked like a satire on the teen slasher genre. Instead what we are served with is an incomprehensible plot (even by the ghost wanting revenge premise)It starts out promising enough with prank gone wrong in the past cliché' then fast forward to the present and it goes downhill from there.

We get the typical stereotyped students a la' the Breakfast Club, a mysterious teacher who we all know, she knows more than she's letting on, a mix of possessed student and murdering spirit, also a tarnished memory of Carradine by appearing in this dredge of a flick.

The effects were bad even for the budget- more reminiscent of early Syfy channel stuff. the plot which could have been good, became a convoluted mess. I took me some patience to get through this movie, the boredom and just waiting for the GD end can make one border on the suicidal. in short it's not worth watching even to mock(unlike such treasures as Troll2) unless you're brain dead, don't waste your time.

Enthusiasic supernatural slasher

[BakuryuuTyranno · 7/10 · 19 December 2010]

This particular movie has pretty much every cliché you could expect from a supernatural slasher, but somehow it works. The generic hero, his girlfriend, his quirky friend, the goth, the jock, the cheerleader type, and a nerd get detention for various reasons. Not surprisingly, they find themselves locked in.

Not surprisingly, there turns out to be the ghost of a nerd killed in a furnace years ago comes back seeking revenge. It happens that they're all connected through past events.

While terribly clichéd, the movie seems pretty spooky in a Halloween spookhouse kinda way. I know I'm making it sound boring, but somehow it works. Maybe the thunderstorms help the atmosphere. I don't know. But I was enjoying it considerably more than i probably should have!

One of the Film's Released After Carradine's Death

[Michael_Elliott · 3 October 2011]

Detention (2010)

* (out of 4)

Really bad horror film starts off in 1976 as a bunch of jocks play a prank on a nerd and sure enough it goes wrong and the nerd dies in a fire. Flash forward to the present day when a group of kids find themselves in detention and the ghost of the nerd comes back for revenge. Yawn. DETENTION is a really bad, really boring and really stupid little movie that doesn't have too much going for it. The best thing you can say about the movie is that the producers paid some extra money to get David Carradine to show up for a few scenes. This would eventually be released after his death but the few minutes seeing him is the only thing this movie has going for it. The rest of the movie you'll have a hard time finding something good to say. The opening prank features the nerd being put into a device, which lightening strikes and soon he catches on fire. The CGI fire is among the worst you're ever going to see and I can never figure out why if something looks this poor the filmmakers just don't try and shoot it in a different way. Things do get worse though. When the "revenge" aspect of the story starts not a single bit of it makes any sense. There are certain things alluded to but these never really play out and they're certainly never explained. I'm not sure why the spirit waited 24-years to seek its revenge and I'm not sure how these certain kids got picked to be in detention at the same time. As you can probably guess, the kids are "connected" to the events of the past and are having to pay with their lives. The screenplay leaves so many questions unanswered you really start to wonder if there was any attempt to really tell a story. Even worse is how stupid all of the characters are. It seems as if they are all doing something that doesn't make much sense including a rich brat and a gangster who seem to find time to flirt, act, mess around and just have a good old time even though they're being stalked by a killer ghost. There are other couples and stereotype characters who are just downright annoying and the role that the new teacher plays is just a joke. The entire set-up makes very little sense and in the end the movie adds up to very little. DETENTION is a pretty awful movie all around and the only reason someone would have to watch it is to see David Carradine but I'd recommend you go watch BOUND FOR GLORY instead.

Enjoyable and entertaining effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 7/10 · 5 November 2012]

Stuck in a high school detention class during a torrential rain-storm, a group of friends find themselves subjected to a series of ghostly visits and incidents in an attempt to seek retribution for a past incident involving their parents and try to get out before they're all killed off.

This one turned out to be a pretty nice haunted-school style ghost film. What works best here is that it's filled with a ton of clichés but never really manages to make them noticeable until pretty late in the film. That the school location is actually pretty creepy and manages to hold a place of suspense is a bright spot here, as it comes off as a perfect spot for ghostly activity and makes for some good times with it stalking the group throughout the grounds. There are some problems, though, in that the reason for possession in most cases goes unexplained when a twist late in the film makes it totally worthless as well as taking way too long in it's set-ups when they tease something only to not deliver as well as not come through on the kill, making some scenes seem to last forever yet the film is really quite brief. Overall, though, it's really not that bad.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Good Ole Fashion 80s Style Horror

[muscalmike · 7/10 · 29 November 2013]

"Detention" is a really well made small B horror film, taking its cues from traditional 80s genre stuff and the more contemporary Asian horror elements -- and by that I mean, a lot of really weird, bizarre and strange stuff happens without a whole lot of explanation. It asks you, the audience, to go along for the ride and its a fun one at that.

Its a story of revenge. Somebody is out to kill all the children of a group of parents who, back in the 1970s, were involved in a "prank gone bad" leading to the grisly death of another teenager - Gabriel. It's Gabriel's mother who is out for blood. The doomed teenagers all end up in detention during the worst storm of the year -- in fact, the storm is so effective that it becomes one of the better characters in the film.

They are trapped in detention with no power, manage to escape but this leads to them being stalked and bumped off, one by one, by horrific supernatural forces that haunt the high school. One even gets possessed and joins in the mayhem. And did we mention that Gabriel's mother was all along a ghost? Still with me.

So - all bets are off. The production credits are all solid from James Hickox's directing to the dark and eerie photography to the creepy visual effects to the somber music score. It must also be noted that, as the high school principal, this was one of David Carradine's final film performances. The rest of the cast is also quite good led by Michael Mitchell who plays "crazy" Sam. 7 Stars.