SXSW 2011: DETENTION Review

Laced with absurd asides, enormously self aware humor and arguably stuffed with a few more ideas and images than it's quite sure what to do with, Joseph Kahn's Detention is Donnie Darko for the ADD set. A film that riffs equally on John Hughes and John Carpenter it intertwines the angsty, postmodern teen comedy with slasher and scifi elements and then ramps the speed of it all up to a dizzying pace. Call it what you will, but it's certainly never boring.

Shanley Caswell stars as Riley Jones, high school outsider. Riley is a girl without a place in the high school social ladder. Or, at least, a girl without a cool place. Not attractive enough to be one of the cool girls. Not sporty enough to fit in with that crowd. She's a bit awkward, a bit clumsy, a bit too smart for her own good, and she can't even win at Debate Club anymore thanks to the perversely convincing arguments of the visiting Canadian exchange student. She's also in love with Clapton Davis (Josh Hutcherson) who is, in turn, smitten with vapid cheerleader Ione. Thus Riley wants to die.

At least she thinks she wants to die. But that's before the arrival of an actual, honest to god, movie slasher killer on the scene who is all too willing to help her along to her bloody end. Then the prospect becomes significantly less appealing.

Produced purely independently on a tiny budget by writer-director Joseph Kahn (Torque), Detention is one of those 'Why stop with the kitchen sink?' sorts of movies, one that jams absolutely everything possible into its slender running time. And while some aspects certainly work better than others it's to Kahn's credit that he manages to maintain the hyper kinetic pace and bizarre logic in which elements lifted straight from Disney teen classics, The Breakfast Club, and the work of David Cronenberg nuzzle up to a teen romance and a time hopping plot to end the world and it all actually makes sense.

An awful lot of what works has to do with the young cast, with Caswell and Hutcherson proving to be an immensely likable and believable couple in the middle of all the madness. The young pair ground the film just enough to keep it from all spinning off out of control. And, beyond them, marks also go to Kahn for actually making Dane Cook funny again. Surely I'm not the only one who felt that particular task was verging on impossible.

In many ways Detention strikes me as a film that will play like Repo: The Genetic Opera. It will polarize, inspiring an intense loyalty amongst the audience it was created for while also triggering a great deal of venom from a good portion of those outside that audience. There isn't going to be a lot of in between on this one.