12-Hour Shift is a 2020 Comedy Horror film written and directed by Brea Grant and starring Angela Bettis, Chloe Farnworth, David Arquette, and Mick Foley.
Drug-addicted nurse Mandy (Bettis) and her cousin Regina (Farnsworth) are involved in organ trafficking. With the help of fellow nurse Karen, Mandy procures the organs from dead patients and Regina acts as the middle person between her and the boss, Nicholas (Foley). However, one night Regina gets manages to leave behind the bag of organs given to her and finds herself delivering a cooler with only cold soda to trafficker Nicholas. He demands that she provide him with a kidney, or else she will be a donor herself.
Tropes present in this film
- Addled Addict: Mandy is snorting drugs in the middle of her shift as a healthcare provider and resorts to stealing organs to finance her habit.
- Annoying Patient: Mr. Kent keeps demanding to be seen despite being told over and over by Karen that as soon as a bed becomes available she will call him.
- Berserk Button: For Mandy, any mention of any of the bad things her brother Andy did to her. Regina gets a Hand Gag on the first instance, and is almost choked to death on the second offense.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Regina may be an idiot, but when she finds herself cornered, she'll fight back and leave you bleeding on the floor.
- Bloody Hilarious: The movie switches between Mandy and Regina obtaining the kidneys and getting blood all over themselves in the process.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Mr. Kent. He keeps complaining to Karen that he feels dizzy and that he wants to be seen NOW. At the end, he comes in, asking about all the bags of organs lying around the hospital that he has had to pick up, explaining why Regina could not find them.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Both Regina and Mandy. Regina has no qualms about killing people to get herself that kidney. By the end, when Jefferson, who is trying to escape threatens Mandy to help him escape or else he'll take Regina. Mandy's response is to tell him to just take her.
- Cop Killer: The reason why Jefferson (David Arquette), the hospitalized prisoner, was in jail to begin with.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mandy and Karen:Karen: Why would you bring this cousin of yours into this if you knew she’d kill people and rat us out?
Mandy: I sometimes have too much faith in humanity.
Karen: That's what I like about you. - Didn't Think This Through: Regina asks Mandy how she kills her patients. A surly Mandy tells her she uses bleach (as in, a bit of injected bleach on dying patients who don't have families to check on them and whose deaths will likely be attributed to natural causes). Regina tries the same method to kill dialysis patient Mr. Collins, except she pours bleach down the patient's throat.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Mandy is upset about the patient Regina chooses to kill, as she was fond of that person.
- Eye Scream: How Mandy defends herself from Mikey. It involves a syringe.
- Going Commando: Regina does not have anything she can use to carry what she thinks is a kidney, so she uses her panties for the task. By the end of her shift Mandy tells her to take off her blood-spattered scrubs and go home. So Regina strips off her top and pants and walks to her car naked except for her bra and socks.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Despite the fact that Jefferson, played by David Arquette, is a criminal and killed a cop, as the story progresses he "helps" the main character by knocking out the cop, and also at the end of the movie he admits to Mandy that he did not intend to harm Regina.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Granted, Mandy is the nurse, not Regina, but the latter is absolutely ignorant about the human body (she has to ask Mandy how many kidneys does she have, and how many does she need to live). Despite that, she makes two very poorly planned attempts to procure a kidney:
- First she kills a patient who is on dialysis and therefore, does not have kidneys that work.
- Then she kills some unlucky stranger and extracts the kidney herself, except she doesn't realize that she extracted the guy's bladder.
- Karma Houdini: Mandy, Regina and Karen survive the night with their operation more or less intact, death row inmate Jefferson takes advantage of the events to escape custody, Nicholas is still running his operation and is last seen coming to the hospital. Really, the only villain to get their comeuppance is Mikey.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Regina tries putting on a set of scrubs to pass herself off as a nurse, except her high heels (and later, her shoeless feet) make her stick out among the others, who wear more practical footwear.
- Stupid Crooks: Regina, bar none. Pouring bleach down a patient's throat to kill them? Harvest a kidney despite not knowing anything about anatomy or even making a plan of where to keep the kidney? Yeah.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: To distract the security guard, Mandy offers him coffee with morphine.
