Two high school students find themselves trapped in a supernatural realm of vengeful spirits and demonic creatures in 1960s Taiwan. As they anxiously walk the haunted halls of their eerily empty school, in search for their missing teacher and a way out, we hear both the dark rumble of the well-crafted B movie and the chilly whispers of a refined psychological horror piece. One of the most successful genre movies from the region in recent memory, Detention is an ambitious, acrobatic balancing act poised between the pulp pleasures of pop culture and the lofty heft of political history.

An adaptation carved from a survival horror videogame, it’s also the first mainstream take on the island’s days of the White Terror in the 1960s, during which thousands were executed. Previously, only prestige productions, like Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness, had dared to address the tragedy. The film rightfully won in five categories at the 2019 Golden Horse Awards in Taipei.