Review: ’12 Hour Shift’ lets the bodies hit the floor

Desperation of the lower class lies at the heart of Brea Grant’s 12 Hour Shift, an organ-harvesting escapade as playful as it is terribly grim. Against the apocalyptic background of Y2K, a period of great strain and paranoia in American life, Grant paints a weary and bloated world not unlike her real life hometown of Marshall, Texas. The filmmaker lines up a smorgasbord of tortured and morally bankrupt characters whose existences have grown so cold and numb they’re willing to do anything to satiate countless addictions.

The hospital, buried deep within Arkansas, festers with misery and drooling complacency. When Mandy (Angela Bettis) clocks in for her double-shift, she already exudes a woman beaten and defeated by the world, a real curmudgeon type, and her next fix is just a heartbeat away. Greatly inspired by Humphrey Bogart, Bettis, whose work spans Girl, Interrupted, 2002’s Carrie television adaptation, and The Woman, fully embraces Mandy’s anti-hero status ⏤ “Mandy is a good nurse with a bad habit,” Bettis tells B-Sides & Badlands over email.

As such, she’s our deeply-flawed protagonist, who’s totally over the bullshit and doesn’t have time to coddle her cousin-by-marriage Regina (Chloe Farnworth). Her hard outer shell harbors fears like most human beings; she’s suppressed feeling much of anything with blow for so long that her fears only lie in “not getting her next fix,” offers Bettis. “The fear of ‘what if I don’t get it?’ and a fear of what she would feel if she actually had to really feel again.”

She’s stern-faced and immovable, delivering even slivers of humor with detached iciness. Despite her innumberable faults, least of all her incapability of connecting to anyone, we come to root for Mandy. Mandy’s tragedy consumes us, and she embodies the essence of what it means to be suffering in life. “We can realistically project our own faults and situations onto the best of antiheroes. We can connect and empathize and feel less lonely in our own circumstances,” remarks Bettis, whose performance perfectly counter-balances Farnworth’s bizarro characterization.

New to the organ blackmarket, Regina demonstrates a particular naivety and charm. When shit inevitably hits the fan, after she botches an organ pick-up and transfer, she infilitrates the hospital as a no-name nurse and wreaks havoc whenever you can. She befriends a patient with dementia, butchers a local teen for his kidney, and dodges the blood-thirsty gaze of her boss’ right-hand man. Described as “a tornado of chaos,”as Farnworth describes it over a recent phone call, there is nothing she leaves unscathed in her wake. “I wanted to build this character that was so crazy but lovable and give her a lot of physicality, as well,” she says. “So, I gave her this wonky walk and twitchy eyes.”

Regina’s finest moments come when she’s trying the hardest and begging to be loved. As Farnworth sees it, she’s “longed to have companionship. I think she’s been forced to grow up on her own,” she notes. “Mandy is the person she wants to impress. When she messes up the whole organ delivery, she’s angry at herself but longing for Mandy to approve of her. It’s really messed up what she does, but it’s this weird in-between. She wants Mandy to like her and be part of the family, but then, Regina lives in this bubble where anything she does doesn’t really matter. She just has to get from point A to point B.”

The emotional tug-of-war between Regina and Mandy, both executing what they think is best in order to survive the longest hospital shift in history, erupts out of Grant’s razor-sharp script. Such high stakes, literally of life or death, jumped off the page from the beginning. “One fun thing about acting really good writing is that so much of the hard work is done for you. So, you can just focus on consistency of character and real, flowing interactions with fellow actors,” Bettis says. “Just let loose and take the ride. I do have to say that Chloe is a magical and mysterious lady ⏤ and a fearless actor. It was great fun to see what she would do next with our little psychopath, Regina. All I had to do was listen and respond with her. Regina really annoyed and confused Mandy in countless ways, but gosh, Mandy loved her anyhow. Go figure.”

Mandy’s addiction-addled brother, wheeled into the hospital as a patient teetering on the edge, plays a pivotal role in her arc, as well. Throughout the third act, she displays a deep love for him, and despite everything, she would do anything for him ⏤ even kill, if it comes to that. “I don’t know why we love the people we love. All of us love at least one person who is not always or necessarily good for us, blood relative or otherwise,” muses Bettis. “Oddly, I don’t think our minds get to choose who we love. We love someone or we don’t. Logic seems to have very little, if anything, to do with this matter of the heart and of the soul.”

12 Hour Shift fixates around murderous mayhem to propel the story, staging outlandish scenarios with physical and verbal gags to satisfying degrees. Practical effects are brutal and delicious, and the characters undergone a considerable amount of damage, physical and mental. To that end, Regina especially learns hard-knock life lessons. “I think she learns she needs to think before she acts. She needs to understand what she did and take a moment and breathe. Hopefully, she can regain the trust of her cousin, eventually,” observes Farnwarth. Furthermore, her character, often the expendable archetype in these kinds of grindhouse gore-fests, lives to see another day. “Normally, my type of character is killed off half-way through. When I first read the script, it was really refreshing to see her go from start to finish. It’s very female empowered. Stripping down and walking off is definitely a really empowering thing for her.”

With Grant’s permission, the cast often played with improvisation through their many takes. “We would do the whole take, and after a few goes around, we would all get an improv go. We could kind of do whatever we wanted,” says Farnworth. “She was very free with what we did. It was very rewarding to get to do that. You don’t always get that as an actor.”

The burgeoning performer was able to flex her acting chops in other considerable ways. Three weeks before filming, she worked strenuously with acting coach Gaby Santinelli to nail down the accent, and listened to Dolly Parton’s music and watched Thelma & Louise “about 30 times,” she says with a laugh. “They have such a good accent in that film, and I was learning a new accent I hadn’t worked with before.”

12 Hour Shift (also starring Mick Foley, Kit Williamson, Nikea Gamby-Turner, and David Arquette, whose knife-wielding psychopath throws another wrench into an already absurd storyline) delivers on its promise of buckets of blood, and it’s so wacky, you buy it hook, line, and sinker. Most importantly, it’s made with a tremendous amount of heart.

12 Hour Shift hits VOD today (October 2).

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