12 Hour Shift (2020)
Written and directed by Brea Grant
Starring Angela Bettis, David Arquette and Chloe Farnworth
Running time: 1 hour and 26 minutes
Unrated: contains drug use, organ harvesting, violence and brief rear nudity
by Hunter Bush
Horror comedies are tough to pull off in a way that satisfies both types of fans. It's even harder to manage with comedy this dark. No one ever really talks about "the hilarious world of black-market organ harvesting", ya know? But writer/director Brea Grant largely pulls it off. Not all the time, but many times I found myself chuckling or out-right laughing at some of the comedic beats here.
12 Hour Shift follows Mandy (Angela Bettis of May) on one disastrous shift at the hospital where she works (guess how long the shift is). We meet a bunch of her co-workers and eventually co-conspirators because, as we quickly learn, Mandy isn’t just a regular-degular nurse, she’s also one of a few middle-women in an organ harvesting scheme for some local criminals. Bettis is fantastic at walking the line between the two genres, at times leaning a little heavier one way or the other to make a joke land or to ratchet up the tension.
Her supporting cast all give performances that are almost universally… charmingly dumb? And that's a fine line to walk, in and of itself. Standouts for me include Chloe Farnworth as Mandy’s “cousin” Regina who’s so distracted demonstrating her soda-based reward system (Spurt Cola btw - yuck!) for ferrying black market organs from the hospital to the criminals that she forgets to actually pack the organs and Kit Williamson as Officer Myers who is so oblivious to what nurses actually do that he doesn’t even realize when he caught Mandy literally red handed! Nikea Gamby-Turner as head nurse Karen is also an excellent performance but not quite as dunderheaded of a character as most of the others. Karen’s actually pretty on the ball, all things considered.
My biggest complaint with the film is the pacing. The middle lags as we get all these different pieces in place for an honestly somewhat over-complicated finale that never quite reaches the Marx Bros. level of plate-spinning that I think it's going for, though it comes damn close. For example, Jefferson (David Arquette) the death row inmate who attempted suicide and ends up escaping his guarded hospital room in all the chaos never actually matters at all. He keeps showing up - with a very dramatic music sting - and just kind of looming briefly before wandering off into the depths of the hospital so he can do it again. And again. To the point that it starts to become almost a joke (which I can’t honestly say is intentional) but really never comes to anything. His final scene ends on a weak joke and he limps out of the movie.
Quick aside: if you’re wondering, given my views on Arquette’s relevance to the larger plot, why I would give him second billing in my cast list - fair point. I didn’t. When we compile these cast things for the header of the articles, we go by the cast order as listed on IMDb.com. Were I personally to compose the cast list it would go: Angela Bettis, Chloe Farnworth, Kit Williamson and Mick Foley.
That’s right, baby! Mankind/Cactus Jack/Dude Love himselves! The hardcore legend Mick Foley is in this and better yet, he’s playing Nicholas the black market Big Boss! He only gets one scene - playing poker in a garage and yelling at Regina for failing to deliver the goods - and it’s great! He plays the scene perfectly, increasing the threat of impending violence until Regina has no choice but to drive the hour back to the hospital to attempt to retrieve her parcel. Personally, I wish Nicholas showed up in the third reel to fulfill his threats in person, but that’s not what the Big Boss does. He sends a heavy, Mikey (Dusty Warren) in this case.
As I mentioned, the final act descends into absolute chaos where I don’t think there’s a single character who actually knows all of what is going on at any moment! It’s equal parts stressful and hilarious to watch Mandy turn a corner and encounter an unexpected dead body forcing her vamp in order to downplay things to Officer Myers so nobody gets arrested (or at least not her), then turn another corner to find the escaped killer looming, all while trying to secure replacement organs to save her ass! And this tension isn’t relegated to just one sequence or set of characters. By this point, Regina has disguised herself as a nurse - also in pursuit of fresh organs - and is just making everything worse for everyone, and every time we check in on her things just spiral. In concept it’s fantastic, but it lacks a real climax that ties things together. The various storylines all tie themselves up but everything would feel a lot more cohesive if there were one lynchpin scene that resolved everything.
This is a minor quibble, honestly. Just because the ending could have been *more* satisfying doesn’t mean 12 Hour Shift is *un*satisfying. Really, I quite enjoyed this. The comedy mostly all lands and the squicky crime element also mostly all works for me and the thing that impresses me most is how well Grant and co. have managed to make them work together. I also really enjoyed the score - which was provided by Matt Glass, doing double duty as the director of photography (!) - which uses choral elements and droning chants to really interesting effect!
Perhaps another edit could tighten up the saggy bits in the middle and make the ending seem more cohesive, but these are minor problems that shouldn’t deter you from giving the movie a watch.
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