Taiwanese horror game Detention has been adapted by Netflix

Detention was a horror game set in a Taiwanese high school that mixed local mythology, Silent Hill-style psychodrama, and the political oppression of the White Terror period into a heady, creepy mix. It was the work of Red Candle Games, perhaps better known for their follow-up Devotion, and the way it was removed from Steam after the discovery in its files of an image critical of the president of China.

Though there was a movie based on Detention in 2019, this TV adaptation is a new collaboration between Netflix and Taiwan's independent Public Television Service. It stars Lingwei Lee as Yunxiang Liu and Ning Han as Ruixin Fang, and is set several decades after the events of the game—depicted in flashback as they're uncovered by a transfer student in the 1990s who learns that Greenwood High School is still haunted by its past. And also ghosts.

Rather than being dumped on the streaming platform all at once, the eight episodes of Detention: The Series are being staggered to coincide with their broadcasts in Taiwan. The first two episodes are available now.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Latest in Movies & TV
Milla Jovovovovovich pointing a sawed-off shotgun at something offscreen, presumably a monster or zombie or something
The Resident Evil movie reboot bidding war is over, and the winner is… Sony, who did every one of those other pretty terrible Resident Evil movies
Roderick de Wett Gwent card art detail
The Witcher show finally adds a character exclusive to the games, too bad he's 'exceptionally loathsome and arrogant'
Jason Momoa, Jack Black, and a kid in Minecraft
Based on its new trailer, I predict A Minecraft Movie will make A Trillion Dollars
MrBeast smiling in front of a pile of cash
'I'm an idiot': MrBeast says he lost 'tens of millions of dollars' of his own money on Amazon's Beast Games
Andor from Andor, smirking
Andor Season 2 trailer is action-packed, but hopefully the show is still actually packed with interesting people quietly talking to each other
Pedro Pascal as Joel in The Last of Us Season 2
HBO announces The Last of Us Season 2 release date: April 13
Latest in News
Fortnite jacked Peter Griffin
Parents are suing Epic over Fortnite item shop 'FOMO' timers they say are inaccurate and manipulative
zoomed in concept art of the Agadon Hunter, a new enemy appearing in Doom: The Dark Ages.
Doom: The Dark Ages already sneakily revealed its 'new Marauder,' and the devs hope he'll be just as challenging, but a little less frustrating
Doom: The Dark Ages art
The sickest gun from Doom: The Dark Ages' trailer is called the 'Skullcrusher' and does such horrible things to demons, the game's lead dev boasts id has 'the best gore in the industry'
Monster Hunter Wilds palico
The next Monster Hunter Wilds update is set to launch on March 10 and will ensure that when you chop off monster parts, the right monster parts get chopped off
A pack of real life Balatro cards.
The official Balatro Timeline documents the history of 2024's biggest game as its developer went from 'obsessed' with making it to 'shocked' at the reception
the next battlefield
Battlefield playtest gameplay is leaking all over the internet, and fans seem cautiously but genuinely excited: 'Okay, we might be back'