A pitch-black comedy full of violence and bloodshed by genre stalwart Brea Grant (Halloween II, Beyond the Gates) and starring Angela Bettis (May, The Woman) sounds like the perfect genre-adjacent offering for the horror fan. Yet, for all the violence and full-on mayhem on display here, 12 Hour Shift gets lost in its own chaos.
Bettis stars as Mandy, a wearied nurse at the start of her double shift overnight. She’s hoping to make it through without incident, but she happens to be a drug addict and a cog in a black-market organ trade scheme. When her simple-minded cousin Regina (Chloe Farnworth) messes up a kidney delivery, and heavily guarded convict Jefferson (David Arquette) is brought in for medical treatment, absolute chaos descends upon the Arkansas hospital. The cousins must race to secure a replacement before it’s too late.
A lot is going on in Grant’s screenplay. It’d be enough for Mandy to carry an entire story as a nurse struggling to maintain her duties while consistently procuring new drugs to snort throughout her shift. She’s also the one that strategically obtains the bodies to be harvested for their organs. Regina, however, complicates Mandy’s narrative at every possible turn, in her determination to avoid termination from her crime boss kin (Mick Foley). Regina also happens to be utterly unintelligent, turning a scheme into a slasher-like heist in her quest to find a new kidney. Mandy’s forced to play catch up as Regina leaves an organ-splattered trail across the hospital, continuously upping the ante to often frustrating levels.
Though this is hardly a one-woman show, Bettis admirably does her best to anchor a film that continually threatens to spiral out of control. She manages to engender sympathy despite being an intentionally unlikable character. Part of that is due to Mandy’s jaded intelligence, at least compared to those around her, but much of it is merely Bettis’s performance. It probably helps that she’s the only character at all that feels remotely fleshed out, which isn’t saying much.
Grant emphasizes dark comedy over character work, resulting in everyone making the worst decisions at every opportunity. Meaning, there’s a randomness to everyone’s behavior. Sometimes those moments feel inconsequential, existing solely for humor’s sake, like a background paramedic that breaks out into song amidst the disorder. Other choices feel detrimental to the flow; Regina’s painted as dumb with the broadest and clumsiest of brushstrokes. Her motivation for her homicidal warpath stems from a fear of dying, but it’s at odds with the bizarre pluckiness in which she dances her way through the chaos. It tends to give tonal whiplash, though it’s clear the intent is solely to elicit a laugh. Arquette’s character feels entirely shoehorned in, and without purpose, save for a third act gag.
Some of the jokes nail their landing, and Bettis’s performance is fantastic. It’s hard to imagine anyone else could give a broken character like Mandy a rooting interest like this. We shouldn’t cheer for Mandy to come out of this unscathed, but we do. Grant’s tossed way too many moving parts into the mix and struggles to keep them all going at once, however. Characters like Kit Williamson’s Officer Myers excel at selling the zany humor, and others serve no purpose whatsoever.
For those that like violent pitch-black comedies packed to the brim with characters misbehaving, and often with aimlessness, there’s enough here to make you chuckle. Mostly, though, 12 Hour Shift is far too ambitious for its own good, playing out like a blood-drenched yet unfocused comedy of frustrating errors.
