New York Post
Detention does have imaginative editing and a stylish, candy-colored look - that is, so long as no one's vomiting, an activity that takes up an ungodly portion of the running time.
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Detention
Scream meets The Breakfast Club in this 2011 horror-comedy about a band of teenagers whose detention turns into a fight for survival when a killer based on a popular movie character comes for them.
2011Rating: MA15+, Strong violence, blood and gore, sexual references and crude humour89 minsUSA
ComedyHorrorMysteryScience FictionThriller
- Director:
- Joseph Kahn ('Torque', 'Bodied')
- Writer:
- Joseph KahnMark Palermo
- Cast:
- Shanley CaswellJosh HutchersonSpencer LockeDane Cook
Detention / Reviews
Variety
What starts as a bracing rush quickly devolves into a deadening assault of stimuli.
Full reviewThe New York Times
Horror fans will probably grow impatient with the unevenly executed "Scream"-style self-awareness, and Mr. Kahn ultimately loses control of his referential plate-spinning, in what might be another illustration that catering to short attention spans leads only to mutually assured distraction.
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A.V. Club
Detention is ballsy, audacious, and uncompromising, but the overall effect of Kahn's Hellzapoppin-meets-Twitter aesthetic is exhausting rather than energizing. It's an ice-cream headache of a movie-movie that's so relentlessly "fun," it's borderline obnoxious.
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Hollywood Reporter
Moves at an absurd pace and dares anyone above 25 to keep up, yet the stream of genre-hopping jokes and sight gags makes the movie an entertaining ride.
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Vulture
You admire the movie for refusing to ever, ever slow down, but you also wonder what might have happened had Kahn dared to settle, even just a bit. Instead, what we get is a mad kaleidoscope of genre, with occasional glimpses into the mysteries of the exploding teenage heart.
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Slant Magazine
High school students (the jocks, the brains, the princesses, the criminals, the basket cases), long the favored prey of serial killers, somehow manage to fight back from the brink yet again in Detention, a bright, witty new genre mash-up.
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