When young Abbie Cornish (Rebecca) wakes up after a night out, apparently remembering nothing, and in police custody, it sparks a chain of events so complicated and so weighed down with logistical and medical contrivances that to continue to provide a synopsis would inevitably run headlong into spoiler territory, so suffice to say that a number of players soon make their presence felt in the plot, including tough police officer Avery (Laz Alonso: the similarly tough yet more nuanced Mother’s Milk in The Boys), rookie lawyer Isaac Barsi (Justin H. Min) and Rebecca’s unhinged cellmate Sullivan (Silas Weir Mitchell) among others.
These players make their way through a script that is by turns outrageous and, once the viewer has grown accustomed to the determination to surprise regardless of story logic, at times oddly predictable. Director and co-writer Felipe Mucci does a good job with the limited resources at his disposal; with only one setting outside of a small number of flashbacks, a small and ever-dwindling main cast and fewer props than the average stage play, he manages nonetheless to enliven things with sharp blue and harsh yellow lighting and a True Detective-style moody country-blues opening credits number, which add up to give Detained the feeling of a decently glossy TV procedural; it’s diverting enough, to those willing to go with it, but you’ve likely seen similar ingredients used to better effect elsewere: last year’s similarly small, tightly-constructed and very twisty Strange Darling; the mind games and puzzle-like construction of the instant classic The Usual Suspects; the bloodier update of the locked-room mystery found in Saw; even Netflix’s rather effective police station-bound Copshop.
★★★☆☆