Hungry ghosts and book burning: Detention explores Taiwan's dark past
"If you chance upon a lantern spirit, avert your gaze and stand unmoving," warns an illustrated page from a creepy book you find in the horror adventure Detention. The accompanying print depicts a grey spectre with a wide-brimmed hat, arched over a toddler. He has covered his mouth with his hands, and his eyes are wide with fear. "When it comes near you, still your breath," the book continues. "Do not panic, and it will keep on moving."
You encounter a lantern spirit moments later. It stops dead still when it sees you, and peers down from stilt-like legs. If you keep your breath held, it continues its grim passage through the darkness - its hanging lamp swaying gently in the wind. Meanwhile, a literal blood river courses past the dimly-lit abandoned school you're trapped in. The walls sometimes pulse with plentiful squinting eyes. Even the laundry is haunted. If you idle too long underneath a washing line, unseen nasties snatch you upward.
Detention can be surreal too. At one point you stroll past a goldfish moon, surrounded by trees stuck with pins and figures made of static. Later, books burn in a windy field. Bound and hooded figures kneel in the bowels of an abandoned school - ankle deep in dark water. The latter set of scenes are all based on real-life historical events.
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