Fantasia Festival 2020 Film Review: Detention

Deeper and more pensive than your average video game adaptation, John Hsu’s Detention aims to shine a revealing light on a violent and oft-ignored time period in Taiwanese history. A love story, a horror movie, and a political thriller all wrapped up in a single package, the film delivers a stirring history lesson and an incisive commentary on the evils of authoritarianism, but its fractured and ride-the-rails ghost story does it no favors. Minor spoilers ahead…