There's always some dickweed trying to spoil people's fun. This film is gnarly.
It's not often that a film comes along that's as crazy ambitious as Joseph Kahn's Detention. Unfortunately, a film can be crazy ambitious and still be pretty lousy. Such is the case with this one, which comes equipped with a surfeit of ideas courtesy of Kahn and his co-writer, Mark Palermo, and zero interest in developing them into anything remotely like a coherent narrative.
As best as I can make out, the film is set in and around Grizzly Lake High, which has been singled out by a masked murderer who patterns their killing spree after movie slasher Cinderhella. While the first victim is extremely deserving, the killer's next -- and more resourceful -- target is militant vegetarian Shanley Caswell, whose crush on slacker Josh Hutcherson is overridden by his obsession with cheerleader Spencer Locke. Meanwhile, Caswell is constantly being hit on by geek Aaron David Johnson, and Hutcherson is trying to duck school bully Parker Bagley, who wants to pound the living shit out of him. And presiding over all of them is principal Dane Cook, which means I have now seen a Dane Cook movie. Joy.
At any rate, Kahn betrays his music-video roots by throwing in everything and the kitchen sink, exhausting his bag of tricks with alacrity and burning through plot points and movie references like they're going out of style. To give but one example, once Bagley has been put through his Three O'Clock High paces, he reveals out of the blue that he has Fly blood and starts vomiting acid all over the place. Before he gets the chance to transform, though, he becomes the Cinderhella copycat's second victim, setting the stage for the whacked-out final act. I wish I could say it had won me over by that point, but alas, it had not. Maybe I'm just not nostalgic enough for 1992.