A man gets out of prison and goes on a killing rampage of those who were on the jury. 12 jury members, 12 people to kill. As basic a plot as it may seem, Twelve does have a very intriguing premise to it. Simple, yes, but the potential to still be very entertaining. 12 is a pretty high kill count for a low budget slasher affair. If done right then there is the potential for a very entertaining horror/thriller. Sadly Twelve isn’t quite able to fully live up to this potential. Despite being a relatively simple premise, Twelve is still pretty hindered by its very obvious low budget.
Twelve makes the smart move of not feeding us much back story for the killer – apart from knowing he was imprisoned for sexual relations with a minor we don’t know anything about him – a formula that has worked very well for genre classics such as Halloween and Friday 13th. The less we know about our killers, the more we enjoy seeing them carve their way through hordes of victims, as soon as we start to humanise them we lose that interest. But because of this decision we are able to cheer and sneer at our killer in all the right places.
There is quite a cool concept behind the killer’s kills, in that he rips the skin off of his victim’s faces (in some cases while they’re still alive), but sadly the quality behind the execution of these kills is quite lacking. In some instances they just come across as downright cheesy. For example, right at the start of the film someone has his head blown off just outside of Las Vegas, but instead of coming across as gruesome, or even humorous, it just seems tacky. The colour of the blood is incredibly unrealistic, and the reaction to the kill leaves a lot to be desired.
OVERALL SUMMARY
After the confusing introduction you are treated to tired, poorly executed clichés, a cringe worthy script, and effects on par with an amateur school production. This is all a shame, as the premise was something that on paper would have worked very well in a horror film. The ideas are all there, it’s just the execution that’s lacking.
