Twelve (XII) review (DVD) ★★

Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Steven Brand, Michael Leydon Campbell, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Emily Hardy, Vanessa Long,
Mercedes McNab, Josh Nuncio, Joe Nunez | Written by Michael A Nickles & Tennyson E Stead
UK Certification 18 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 79 minutes | Directed by Michael A Nickles

The straight-to-video horror market continues to expand with the release of Twelve, also known as XII, but just like a considerable amount of the films in that market, this one, although not without promise, is entirely forgettable.

The title refers to the number of men and women who made up the jury that convicted Leonard Karlsson of a crime against a child. After having his face slashed by fellow inmates in the opening scene during his prison sentence, the film continues five years later. We're never actually sure of what the man is supposed to have done, which is disappointing as you never know whether or not he's guilty, so there's an immediate damper on the entire story. My only guess is that he's a pedophile, but regardless, any crime involving a child is deserving of a sentence longer than five years as far as I'm concerned. Did he escape? We never know. Karlsson returns to the sleepy town where he got sent down and begins to takes his gory revenge on the twelve jurors, slicing off their faces as was done to him and keeping them as trophies in his lair.

In the making-of, writer/director Michael A. Nickles mentions that he wanted to shoot a film that wasn't your run of the mill body count horror. A film that developed its characters and fleshed out a story that you could invest in. Sadly, the power of his direction and script completely miss his intentions. Twelve is very much your everyday genre picture. Masked killer, check, boiler suit, check, etc. While it has promising foundations, the execution is just way off the mark. None of the performances are of note, though the cast aren't particularly awful. With flimsy characters who you can't believe in, the actors are just there, like stringless puppets.

Occasionally the humour works, but not to the degree most likely anticipated by Nickels when he wrote the screenplay. After the opening scene in prison, the film begins with an admittedly laugh-inducing kill where a man's head is blown up by a shotgun shell as he drives back from his Vegas wedding with his bride in the passenger seat – a death that resembles a balloon stuffed full of wet chunks of gore popping. It's a fun way to start the show, but it only goes downhill from there.

When the credits roll Twelve leaves you near dumbfounded as you wonder if that was it. The payoff is far from satisfying, but by being that way keeps in line with the rest of the film, I suppose. There are a few nice ideas, it's just that they become so insignificant thanks to being pushed to the verge of oblivion by everything that's wrong with it. Despite what the director wanted the film to be, it's nothing new.

EXTRAS ?? Beneath the Skin: a making-of feature; A Shotgun in the Head: a minute-long look at the creation of the exploding head shot at the beginning of the film; Make Up FX Gallery; the trailer; and a feature-length commentary with the writer/director, actress Emily Hardy, and the producer/composer.

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