ou ever seen anything like this?” Beginning with a cold open that almost perfectly mimics an episode of a true-crime television show – not just with the introduction of the aftermath of a multiple-homicide scene brimming with mutilated corpses (a fire has burned up a building, with one of the charred figures having left a cryptic message in blood on the wall), but also with a title sequence boasting a song and clips of imagery that will likely turn up later. And it also fades in and out with these graphics, again like a TV program – an odd choice to mirror, since this is a feature-length film.

When it returns to the start of the story – which is actually the middle, which requires flashbacks to navigate back to the actual start – Rebecca Kamen (Abbie Cornish) groggily awakes in a Gaithersburg police station. She barely remembers the events of the night before, or how she was found at 2:00 in the morning by a cruiser, passed out in her car. And though she eventually remembers meeting a guy, Robert Audrey (John Patrick Amedori), at a bar as she drinks too much wine, she’s quite shocked when she’s informed that her vehicle likely collided with a cyclist, as it was found crunched up and covered in blood. “It’s not lookin’ so good.”

Rebecca is given the good-cop/bad-cop treatment as Detective Avery (Laz Alonso) offers up a donut and some calming chatter, while Detective Moon (Moon Bloodgood) threatens her with the consequences of a deadly hit and run. Interestingly, Kamen is smart enough to ask for her lawyer, though she instead gets the only man available, a seemingly inexperienced, timid attorney, Isaac Barsi (Justin H. Min), who is more concerned with validating his parking than following up with the results of forensic testing. To complicate matters, the prisoner’s initial detention is the least of her worries; her situation spirals out of control quite unexpectedly in increasingly more uncomfortable, chaotic ways.

Though the premise soon becomes admittedly absorbing, establishing that nothing is what it seems and that no one can be trusted, with surprising motives surfacing and characters playing mind games against one another, it moves along a little slowly. Instead of getting right into the nitty-gritty, it stalls, repeatedly, as if to stretch out the runtime on an underdeveloped concept. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is commonplace (alternating with foolish) and that the various interactions reveal extreme, coincidental ineptitudes in order for actions to proceed. It’s all too carefully orchestrated and inorganic, as well as overstuffed with dawdling, accidental behaviors, to be believable. “You need to take a few minutes? Go ahead.”

It also doesn’t help that “Detained” regularly attempts to copy elements from other crime capers – most predominantly, “The Usual Suspects” (with a hint of “Mindhunters” [2005] and “And Then There Were None”). Nevertheless, thanks to minimal thrills, the accruing of bodies, a smattering of violence (of the low-budget kind), and the steady revealing of clues, the film maintains a certain engagement. But it’s unforgivable just how much stonewalling goes on; the various ideas here may be cinematic, but they’re drawn out so considerably that it’s soon apparent that the writers didn’t have enough material to sustain a feature length. And as each scene transpires, the coincidences become more extreme (bordering on comical), transitioning what should have been a sensible, realistic murder-mystery into something far too overwrought, over-the-top, unconvincing, and, toward the finale, completely predictable. At least the acting is decent. Ultimately, at its best, it’s cagily circuitous; but at its worst, it’s downright laughable. “This thing’s almost over.”

– Mike Massie