The Night of the 12th is not a horror film like I thought it might have been. It is a voyage of discovery, for the characters as well as the viewer. We get the tagline "It is said that every investigator has a crime that haunts them, a case that hurts him more than the others, without him necessarily knowing why. For Yohan that case is the murder of Clara." It suggests that the murder remains unsolved, but since it is delivered in the midst of the film those of us taking it in hold out hope for a resolution, for the crime to be solved.
There are very real characters in this movie smartly delivered by a well chosen cast. They show us real life. A woman is murdered by being burned to death, the masked killer choosing to throw a flammable liquid on the victim on a dark night- the 12th, then setting it and her ablaze. Our protagonist is a newly appointed chief detective investigating the case who initially finds no culprit despite a thorough investigation. We rejoin him and his fellow detectives three years later where a judge prompts him to pick up the case again just prior to the 3rd anniversary of the murder.
We are convinced the movie is abut the murder case, but when the end delivers no guilty party we are forced to recognize that all along the movie was about other themes. At one point our protagonist comes to the realization that there is something very wrong with the relationship between men and women. Later one of the new underling detectives, when asked about the motivation for her choice of police work shares that, as James Brown put it, 'it's a man's world'. That men do both most of the murdering, and the solving of murders.
This case that haunts our lead effects his daily actions and choices; it restrains him from moving on with his life in ways outside of the case. In one of the final scenes of the movie the new underling detective says she is unafraid of ghosts, and that while the dead remain among us they are the impetus for the good deeds we do. This brings great comfort to our lead man and allows him to move on from the constraints placed upon him by the unsolved mystery.
The murder case was only the setting for the real story, which was rising above these self-imposed psychological restraints, the flower our man finds among the dead weeds.
There are very real characters in this movie smartly delivered by a well chosen cast. They show us real life. A woman is murdered by being burned to death, the masked killer choosing to throw a flammable liquid on the victim on a dark night- the 12th, then setting it and her ablaze. Our protagonist is a newly appointed chief detective investigating the case who initially finds no culprit despite a thorough investigation. We rejoin him and his fellow detectives three years later where a judge prompts him to pick up the case again just prior to the 3rd anniversary of the murder.
We are convinced the movie is abut the murder case, but when the end delivers no guilty party we are forced to recognize that all along the movie was about other themes. At one point our protagonist comes to the realization that there is something very wrong with the relationship between men and women. Later one of the new underling detectives, when asked about the motivation for her choice of police work shares that, as James Brown put it, 'it's a man's world'. That men do both most of the murdering, and the solving of murders.
This case that haunts our lead effects his daily actions and choices; it restrains him from moving on with his life in ways outside of the case. In one of the final scenes of the movie the new underling detective says she is unafraid of ghosts, and that while the dead remain among us they are the impetus for the good deeds we do. This brings great comfort to our lead man and allows him to move on from the constraints placed upon him by the unsolved mystery.
The murder case was only the setting for the real story, which was rising above these self-imposed psychological restraints, the flower our man finds among the dead weeds.