Movie Review: Deadly Detention (2017)

Synopsis: With their high school closed down for fumigation, five students must serve their Saturday detention at a former correctional facility. When their principal is killed in front of them by an unseen assailant, they realize their lives are in danger and they must find a way out of the prison.

Who's in it? The movie stars Alex Frnka, Sarah Davenport, Henry Zaga, Coy Stewart and Gillian Vigman.


Review: With my oldest daughter preparing for an upcoming ice show and her younger sister at the dance studio preparing for a competition, my wife and I haven't been able to see much of each other for the past several days. And, as a result of that, have fallen behind on our movie watching.

However, we finally found a little bit of time yesterday evening and, since I thought this movie looked intriguing, wound up watching it. Unfortunately, it fell well short of expectations.

The movie did have one thing going for it. I found I really liked the individual characters. The writers had fun with this movie, making it more of a horror/comedy and did a good job of creating characters who were over-the-top stereotypes of what you would expect to see in a film in this genre. As my wife and I described it, it was a bit like watching the horror/comedy version of The Breakfast Club.

The problem with the movie is it never fully capitalizes on this and, ultimately, winds up being somewhat uninspired.

The biggest issue my wife and I had with this movie is it was way too predictable. It wasn't too difficult to figure out who the killer was  or even why that person was doing it. I kept hoping it would turn out to be a red herring and there would be some sort of surprise. But, that just did not turn out to be the case.

Also not helping this movie was the overall lack of urgency. As I told my wife, for a group of kids who just saw their principal (Vigman) murdered and are facing death themselves, they seemed awfully calm about their situation, even finding time to tell jokes, flirt and have sex. When you combine that with the outside shots of the "prison," which looked more like a college campus than a correctional institution (no fences and a baseball diamond?) the movie never reaches a point where it is even halfway believable.

Final Opinion: As I said, I thought the writers did a good job of creating characters that were somewhat interesting (at least compared to other movies from this genre). However, the overall movie just fails on too many levels.

My Grade: D

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