First Impressions: Detention

I thought since I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about this drama on the timeline that it would be good to do a quick and small first impressions post. The drama itself is relatively short, so I don’t want to go into too much detail like my other first impression posts but do want to highlight it. I’ll try to keep this fairly spoiler-free - or at least larger spoiler-free. As of writing this, only two episodes are out, and that’s all the content I know.

Native Title: 返校
Release Date: December 5, 2020 (airs Saturdays/Sundays)
Episode #: 
8
Platform: Netflix
Director: I-Hsuan Su, Shiang-An Chuang, Yi Liu

Writer: (if you know, please let me know so I can update this)
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Starring: Ling-Wei Lee, Ning Han. Rest of the cast can be found here.

I want to go into this saying that I knew nothing about the origins of the story, nor the story really itself when I first started watching this. As a fan of horror, there is no bad time for horror so I was happy to see something new coming out in December. I usually keep up with what Netflix adds and saw that this was in the group of new Asian dramas coming out this month, and that is originally why I had this on my radar. I saw the preview for it and that’s it. Since briefly looking into things for this post, I now know that it’s based on a video game and was also a movie. Nothing in this review is going to reflect those since I have no personal ties or knowledge with them.

The trailer goes into a little bit more detail about the show, however, a lot of it is not in the first two episodes so watch at your own risk:

Detention follows Yunxiang Liu, a new student who has come to live with her mom in a small village after living abroad in the UK for a while. She can see ghosts, and her mom has been trying to help her deal with it (while not said that I remember, this is probably one of the bigger reasons why she has moved back to Taiwan). While given the tour of the school she learns of an abandoned building on the campus that has been sealed off for years after deaths occurred at the school.

The drama is pretty straightforward story about ghost possession and revenge for the acts done in the past. The drama bounces back in between the two times: current day (late 90’s) and thirty years prior, with Liu’s character being the medium in between. There are obviously a lot of issues and secrets with the school, and with the introduction of the new laid back teacher in episode two, things are going to start emerging. The first two episodes do a fairly good job at setting the tone for the series. If you haven’t encountered Asian horror, it’s usually slow and this drama is no different. I don’t think a lot of people are going to like how slow it is and how little progression we’ve gotten in these two episodes, especially with the knowledge of how short it is.

In the first two episodes you do get small (albeit disjointed) glimpses of what happened via the lead’s images and the flashbacks, as well as setting up some of the older characters who were part of the incident that happened at the school in the 60’s…but that’s about it. It’s more of a character set up than anything, and to set up the big reveal at the end of the second episode. That being said, I’m one of those weird ones who actually likes slow so I didn’t mind it. I think it had some nice creepy atmospheric parts (bonus for me!) and a lot of the story that’s in the abandoned classroom building has a lot of the creepier and scary aspects of it. Not a lot - if at all - on jump scares, but it has some of the horror elements there.

I’m going to continue with the series. I didn’t really mind any of the lack of storyline and the pacing of the drama to make me want to drop it. It has some interesting elements with what potentially went on during the 60’s, and I think it’ll get interesting there especially since the drama has already set up so many of the current day faculty being directly involved. I like the mystery that it has going on with that. It’s dark and creepy and the perfect winter drama for me to end 2020 with. I think if you are a fan of horror, you might want to try this drama out however you might want to wait till the entire series is out before giving this a try to really see if some of these early issues are going to affect your enjoyment. I’m only two episodes in, so it could continue the way it is or really start ramping up.

If you’re keeping up with the series let me know!

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