Awfully Good: Detention

August 27th 2014, 10:03am

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

It’s back-to-school time and if you’re in the mood to get educated, might I suggest…

Detention (2011)

Director: Joseph Kahn
Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Shanley Caswell, Dane Cook

A killer from the popular slasher film CINDERHELLA begins offing teenagers at a local high school and [POP CULTURE HEAD EXPLOSION INSANITY].

DETENTION is borderline genius and almost equally offensive. It’s completely manic and insane and self-referential. It constantly jump genres and breaks the fourth wall so frequently it pretty much just builds a house and lives there. You will either passionately love this movie or feverishly hate it; there is no in between. As someone who adores director Joseph Kahn’s previous ode-to-ridiculousness TORQUE, you can definitely count me in the former category.

What if Kanye West was President of Panem?

In my review, I joked that TORQUE was a movie for the ADD generation, but DETENTION is literally made for those kids—bursting at the seams with all the best/worst modern lingo, on-screen text to accommodate nano-sized attention spans, and anything else within reach to mock and cater to youth culture. There are also so many movie and geek references that it almost becomes overwhelming. From musings on Patrick Swayze’s oeuvre to hyper-accurate genre parodies to the most random allusions ever (“Are you coming over tonight? We’re going to watch FREEJACK on Laserdisc.”), cinema informs pretty much every fabric of DETENTION. Hell, they even poke fun at movie websites and reviews like the one you’re reading right now. The result is akin to post-modern Tarantino filtered through SCOTT PILGRIM. It’s a movie about recycling pop culture and popular movie tropes, while doing just that.

When they made a prequel to the bear suit scene from THE SHINING, society collectively agreed that movies had gone too far.

So what’s DETENTION actually about? Hell if I know. The plot involves (in no relevant order) woeful teenagers, psychotic stalkers, random aliens, body swapping, magnetic bear time machines, football players who turn in to flies and vomit acid, and the end of the world. To describe it as DONNIE DARKO meets SCREAM meets THE BREAKFAST CLUB is both accurate and also a disservice to the film.

THAT GUY

The closest thing this movie has to a hero is Riley Jones, a self-pitying loser who can’t even get her peers to care as she’s hanging herself in the school hallway. Riley won’t admit that she has a crush on her neighbor, the wonderfully named Clapton Davis (played by HUNGER GAMES star Josh Hutcherson), a popular kid who needs to either get an A or save the world in order to graduate. (My favorite thing about Clapton Davis is that he watches ROAD HOUSE to learn how to fight.) Though these kids and their friends all have their own drama going on as they prepare for prom, all that takes a backseat when their classmates begin turning up dead at the apparent hands of popular slasher movie icon Cinderhella. Convinced that one of them is the killer, their principal (played with asshole glee by Dane Cook) gives them all Saturday detention until someone confesses. And from there the plot goes… somewhere.

The sequel to IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE sure was a downer.

The biggest compliment I can pay this film is that the insanity is clearly intentional. A lesser filmmaker would use all this style and self-aggrandizing for the sake of it. Kahn uses it to push the envelope and say something. What that message is is tough to articulate it because there’s so much going on at any given time (and my brain is always fried after watching this movie), but there’s definitely a reflection on nostalgia and the state of cinema (in a film filled with movie references, a guy literally uses a TV attached to his fist to fight people), critiques on celebrity and how media defines modern culture (Riley goes from being suicidal to an attempted murder victim to an amateur porn star without anyone batting an eye) and a very John Hughes-ian look at how teenagers are growing up today.

Is that a threat?

I think. I don’t know. My head hurts. All I know is that you need to make more movies, Joseph Kahn.

So much randomness and so many pop culture references.

It’s hard to single out specific scenes from this flick, but the opening sequence should give you a good idea of what you’re in for. Plus, a crazy character flashback and Hanson. So much Hanson.

A quick wardrobe malfunction (from an obvious body double).

Ready to stay after class? Buy this movie here!

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