Detention

While a lot of Detention is steeped in anguish and anxiety, the terror induced by those emotions becomes the pathway back into the light.

The absorbing and entertaining Detention works well enough as a primer on a traumatic period of history, and as a story of semi-supernatural salvation for sins past, that it earns its surprisingly moving final moments, and even its heavily on-the-nose exhortation to modern-day Taiwan to remember and honor its ghosts.

In gaming terms, this movie’s characters find themselves on a screen where every move leads to a bottomless pit. The nightmare they’re in is as existential as it is visceral.

Making his directorial debut, Hsu clearly has an eye for striking imagery, and Detention is filled with moments of shuddering, abstract beauty. But his ghost story never quite materializes from its uncanny ether.