Detained is a single location thriller that’s allegedly full of mental twists and turns… except it’s largely predictable and obvious. It’s an utter failure at the one thing it needs to be: surprising.

It’s about a woman brought into a police station for an interrogation… only she doesn’t remember what happened the previous night. Pretty soon though, the mind games start and the flick flips into more of a con artist thriller as we slowly realize not everything is as it seems.

I should put “slowly” in the above sentence in quotes since everything from the very first minute feels like an obvious braindead fake out. It’s mostly the set being so clearly not what they say it is… but that could have just been shitty low-budget set decoration. But it’s also the actors and especially their dialog not pulling things off convincingly either.

Almost every turn-about and surprise in this flick is simply not a surprise. Sure, I didn’t know exactly what was going on but I knew enough was off-kilter that I didn’t trust anything. And the reveals – except for the one at the very end – were not enticing or interesting.

I like the cast, in theory. Abbie Cornish, Laz Alonso (MM from The Boys), Moon Bloodgood (who still has a great name), and a few others are nice-to-see faces in a movie that gives them nothing to work with. From an acting standpoint, nobody is the confidence man they need to be… their tricks and misdirects are telegraphed well in advance.

This flick has an interesting idea that’s too obvious in its production to work. Under different hands, with a different script, and (sadly) a different cast, it could have been something electric. Instead it just made me wish for a better production.

Score: 64