THE DEVIL'S DOZEN

A large group of strangers mysteriously find themselves locked in a large room without knowing who brought them there and why. Armed men burst in, and 12 people from the group are taken, led to another room, while the others are immediately killed. The 12 chosen ones are explained the rules of the "game": each of them has serious sins to atone for, except one, who is completely innocent. In the next few hours, each of them will die, except one person. Every 12 minutes, one of them will be eliminated by lottery, unless the group decides who must sacrifice themselves and kill them. The elimination game begins, only the most determined or innocent will survive! The idea behind "The Devil’s Dozen" isn't bad, although it has nothing original and forcefully inserts itself into those sadistic survival thrillers like "Saw" that have proliferated so much in recent years, particularly on the home video shelves. The problem with Jeremy London's film lies in a multitude of carelessness and a general clumsiness that make it a definitely unsuccessful product. The concept of "The Devil’s Dozen" is all about confronting people with their sins and weaknesses, using guilt as a deadly weapon, which triggers a series of different reactions that can result in murder, suicide, abandonment to events, or closing in on oneself. In short, the classic Big Brother maxim: take a number of people who don't know each other and are very different from each other, lock them together, and put them in a competitive situation. The result, obviously, can only give reason to those who think that human beings are a selfish species destined for the destruction of their peers. The structure of this film is very similar, for this reason, to films like "Cube" and "Saw II", with a setting exclusively indoors, importance given to physical (here little) and psychological violence, and character development very close to the stereotype. So we will immediately have a clear picture of who will go all the way and who will soon abandon the "game" with the "asshole" violent, the fragile beauty, the mother of the family, the tough girl, the one who immediately poses as the leader, the loser, the wise one, and so on... with the aggravating circumstance that in "The Devil’s Dozen" there are perhaps too many characters (12!) and consequently some of them are practically devoid of characterization but are only there to make up the numbers, with the strange choice, however, that it is not said that these are the first to leave the scene, on the contrary! But this is the least of the evils, since we have learned a long time ago to enjoy a horror for other factors and not for the characterization of the characters... rather "The Devil’s Dozen" proves very predictable in the management of events: everything goes exactly as you imagine from the beginning, twists included, and this is not a good thing for a film that nevertheless relies heavily on the final revelation. For much of the film, there is almost the feeling of being in front of the filmed proposal of a stage play, a trend that in recent years – from Friedkin with "Bug" and "Killer Joe" to Polanski with "Carnage" and "Venus in Fur" – seems almost fashionable... but it is not and that feeling is given only by the excessive static nature of the action and setting. The almost 90 minutes of the film are a continuous arguing between characters who must decide who should be the next to die and the only location is a room furnished like a dentist's waiting room. Yet the film does not bore. It is approximate, poorly written, full of naivety (the bodies that disappear?), repetitive and predictable, but it manages for some strange reason to keep the viewer's attention. In the cast are champions of straight-to-video thrillers like Jake Busey, Thomas Howell, and Eric Roberts, as well as the director himself in a cameo, since his main activity is indeed acting. "The Devil’s Dozen" in Italy is available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc Koch Media.