"Detention" has been touted as one of the last movies David Carradine appeared in. However, fans of Carradine (that is, if there are any after appearing in a long unbroken string of awful movies prior to this one) should know that he only has about three brief scenes in the entire movies, which don't look like they took long for the director to film. And while his appearance is brief, he manages to be incredibly awful in his role. In fact, the whole movie is awful. It's wretchedly photographed and lit, with ugly and dark colors appearing throughout. The characters are uniformly written to be no more than clichés, and obnoxious clichés to boot. They are so dumb, they don't even think of going to the school's emergency exits to escape! And the special effects mostly consist of cheap CGI that looks like it was made by a high school student on his home computer. I would bet that the people who worked in front of and behind the camera did not subsequently list this movie on their resumes.

Okay, so I'm thankful I didn't pay to see this film, because it is an absolute abomination for so many reasons.The film revolves around quest for revenge: a young man was burned alive during a prank. As we find out later, his Mother offed herself following his demise just a few short weeks after he died...and she's royally ticked that the school didn't also commemorate her death as well, but that's another matter.Somehow the children of the original kids that killed him wind up in detention, along with a nerdish straggler and a new teacher. And then, one by one, the group gets peeled away while they are stranded in the school, and killed off.It's best not to think about the impracticalities that this film raises...like the fact that these kids (the children of the original ones responsible for the prank accident) are all the same age, their parents live in the same communities, and they all happened to get detention on the exact same day as the new teacher (guess who that turns out to be) starts.The strangest thing is that people start seeing ghosts and suspecting the supernatural is at work, but when some of the students (namely the nerdish straggler) act strangely, no one really puts two and two together.The straggler is possessed...and when he attacks the "hero" and "heroine," he is hit with a fire extinguisher, which ends the threat he poses. So then, what does the heroine do to the defenceless boy? She pulverizes him with the fire extinguisher until it's pretty obvious that she finished the job.There are all kinds of ropes...they could've tied him up...but alas, she decides that killing him while he's unconscious is the way to go. I mean, WTF??? Others have mentioned the CGI, and they are right. The ghost scenes reminded me of the film "Ghost," although keep in mind that that film was 20 years old when this one was made...it's about as silly as it would've been if James Cameron had used the visual effects from "Raise the Titanic" for his film "Titanic!" The burning scene at the beginning was especially cringe worthy...not gross, not just bad...but unforgivably bad! I'm sure there are grade school kids who play on the computer who could've come up with something better than what was passed off there.My advice: this would make a good film to watch before seeing the cheesy, terrible film "Battleship"...if you see this one first, the CGI in "Battleship" will likely blow you away!

Detention (2010) * (out of 4) Really bad horror film starts off in 1976 as a bunch of jocks play a prank on a nerd and sure enough it goes wrong and the nerd dies in a fire. Flash forward to the present day when a group of kids find themselves in detention and the ghost of the nerd comes back for revenge. Yawn. DETENTION is a really bad, really boring and really stupid little movie that doesn't have too much going for it. The best thing you can say about the movie is that the producers paid some extra money to get David Carradine to show up for a few scenes. This would eventually be released after his death but the few minutes seeing him is the only thing this movie has going for it. The rest of the movie you'll have a hard time finding something good to say. The opening prank features the nerd being put into a device, which lightening strikes and soon he catches on fire. The CGI fire is among the worst you're ever going to see and I can never figure out why if something looks this poor the filmmakers just don't try and shoot it in a different way. Things do get worse though. When the "revenge" aspect of the story starts not a single bit of it makes any sense. There are certain things alluded to but these never really play out and they're certainly never explained. I'm not sure why the spirit waited 24-years to seek its revenge and I'm not sure how these certain kids got picked to be in detention at the same time. As you can probably guess, the kids are "connected" to the events of the past and are having to pay with their lives. The screenplay leaves so many questions unanswered you really start to wonder if there was any attempt to really tell a story. Even worse is how stupid all of the characters are. It seems as if they are all doing something that doesn't make much sense including a rich brat and a gangster who seem to find time to flirt, act, mess around and just have a good old time even though they're being stalked by a killer ghost. There are other couples and stereotype characters who are just downright annoying and the role that the new teacher plays is just a joke. The entire set-up makes very little sense and in the end the movie adds up to very little. DETENTION is a pretty awful movie all around and the only reason someone would have to watch it is to see David Carradine but I'd recommend you go watch BOUND FOR GLORY instead.

This particular movie has pretty much every cliché you could expect from a supernatural slasher, but somehow it works. The generic hero, his girlfriend, his quirky friend, the goth, the jock, the cheerleader type, and a nerd get detention for various reasons. Not surprisingly, they find themselves locked in.Not surprisingly, there turns out to be the ghost of a nerd killed in a furnace years ago comes back seeking revenge. It happens that they're all connected through past events.While terribly clichéd, the movie seems pretty spooky in a Halloween spookhouse kinda way. I know I'm making it sound boring, but somehow it works. Maybe the thunderstorms help the atmosphere. I don't know. But I was enjoying it considerably more than i probably should have!