High School Can Be Hell
There’s been a big upswing in video games being seen as a legitimate art form over the past few years, and Hollywood is taking note. Outside of numerous video games being adapted, with varying levels of success, (including upcoming ones, like the Metal Gear Solid movie which recently cast Oscar Isaac as Solid Snake) we’re starting to see big budget television series’ based on games, like The Witcher, the rumored Silent Hill series, and the upcoming The Last of Us adaptation.
Detention might not seem like the likeliest addition to the slate. Set in the midst of the White Terror period (when Taiwan was under martial law to suppress political dissidents) the game is a 2D sidescrolling horror adventure that sees students Wei and Ray trapped in the remote Greenwood High School with mysterious creatures known as the lingered, and forced to uncover the school’s bloody history to survive. The game made waves for its combination of Silent Hill-esque psychological horror and the very real terror of living in a police state.
Detention has already received a movie adaptation, but the new series – set In the nineties- does things a little differently. Set in the nineties, it sees a new heroine Yunxiang entering a forbidden wing of Greenwood High School where she meets the ghost of a student who leads her to reveal the dark history of the school – including the events of the game – as history begins to repeat itself.
The series began streaming yesterday on Netflix, with each of the eight hour-long epsidoes being released weekly, to coincide with their airing on Taiwanese channel PTS. Time will tell whether the series will be seen as another video game flop or become a rare well-regarded video game adaptation, but if the trailer’s anything to go by we’re due to have a spooky time.
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