12-Hour Shift

12 Hour Shift is a 2020 unrated dark comedy film that follows a series of events taking place during an overnight shift at an Arkansas hospital in 1999. Written and directed by Brea Grant, the film stars Angela Bettis, best known for her roles in May (2002) and Girl, Interrupted (1999), as Mandy, a drug-addicted nurse, and Chloe Farnworth, noted for her part in the award-winning horror film MaXXXine (2024), as Regina, Mandy’s reckless, absent-minded accomplice. In addition to being the film producer, Scream trilogy actor David Arquette also appears in the supporting cast as Jefferson, a convicted murderer being held at the hospital for treatment. The movie was filmed in Jonesboro (Craighead County).

The film opens with Mandy smoking outside of the hospital while preparing for her upcoming shift. She is joined by her coworker Cathy (Julianne Dowler), who chastises her for being quiet and thin. After insulting Cathy, Mandy enters the hospital, where she secretly crushes and snorts pills in the bathroom. She then meets Regina outside by a vending machine, giving her a human kidney inside of a cooler for Regina to bring to organ trafficker Nicholas (played by WWE wrestler Mich Foley).

After Regina leaves, Mandy heads inside to tend to Mrs. Patrick, an elderly patient accompanied by her concerned daughter. She then visits Mr. Collins, a terminally ill patient receiving kidney dialysis. While speaking with him, Mandy is interrupted by an alert that a new patient has been admitted to the hospital in a drug-induced coma. She recognizes him but denies any connection when asked by the attending staff. As he is being wheeled into his room, Mandy slips away to meet with fellow nurse Karen (Nikea Gamby-Turner) in the hospital chapel, where it is revealed that the two have been working together to sell organs to Nicholas, usually selecting terminally ill patients with Mandy injecting bleach in their bloodstreams to speed up the process. Mandy tells Karen that while she initially planned to kill Mrs. Patrick, she believes that it would be too risky. She instead is considering Jefferson as her next target, with his inept security guard as her main obstacle.

Regina meets with Nicholas, who opens the cooler to find the kidney missing. Under the threat of her own organs being harvested, Regina rushes back to the hospital and demands that Mandy bring her a new one. After she refuses, Regina asks about the process, intending to do it herself. Mandy vaguely shares that she uses bleach, then urges Regina to leave immediately to avoid raising suspicion. Instead of following this warning, Regina impersonates a nurse and attempts to scope out a potential victim. Believing her to be a night-shift nurse, Mr. Collins calls her over to finish his dialysis.

Meanwhile, Mandy mixes morphine into a cup of coffee, offering it to the guard watching over Jefferson with the intention of anesthetizing him. Shortly after, Mandy and other hospital staff rush to answer an alert and find Mr. Collins dead. Regina, misunderstanding Mandy’s earlier explanation, had poured bleach down his throat. Mandy finds Regina and scolds her for being careless, as Mr. Collins’s failing kidneys were of no use to them. Regina blackmails Mandy, threatening to expose her role in the organ trafficking scheme and her drug use unless she brings her a new kidney. Mandy agrees on the condition that Regina leaves the hospital immediately and meets her again at the vending machine in one hour.

Further tension is added to the plot when Jefferson escapes the restraints of his hospital bed and a police officer appears at the scene. The events that follow become increasingly chaotic, gory, and complicated as Regina continues her panicked murder spree, and Mandy attempts to clean up after her without raising suspicions.

During its opening weekend, 12 Hour Shift grossed $2,532 in box office sales. This low figure is in part due to the drastic decrease in theater attendance during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was at its height during the film’s release on October 2, 2020. Despite this, 12 Hour Shift has received moderate reviews, obtaining a 78 percent score on the popular film aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. In Variety, critic Dennis Harvey praises Grant’s screenwriting, noting that despite “escalating, piled-up crises,” she maintained “a certain calm detachment from frequently grotesque, frenetic goings on.” In The Guardian, Cath Clarke argues that Angela Bettis’s performance as Mandy is the most outstanding aspect of the film, stating that the “deliciously sour” portrayal eclipses the more mundane aspects of the film.

For additional information:
“12 Hour Shift.” Internet Movie Database. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10309552/ (accessed June 29, 2026).

“12 Hour Shift.” Rotten Tomatoes. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/12_hour_shift (accessed June 29, 2026).

Clarke, Cath. “12 Hour Shift Review—Guts and Gore in Cheerful Bad-Taste Horror.” The Guardian, January 19, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/19/12-hour-shift-review-guts-and-gore-in-cheerful-bad-taste-horror (accessed June 29, 2026).

Harvey, Dennis. “‘12 Hour Shift’ Review: Angela Bettis Harvests Organs in Clever Hospital-Set Black Comedy.” Variety, September 2, 2020. https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/12-hour-shift-review-1234757707/ (accessed June 29, 2026).

Starr M. Carr
CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas