Reviews

I love cheesy/goofy hallmark type of movies as they're usually lighthearted and mindless which is always refreshing after a busy/tough day. I've lost count how many I've watched so far.

But oh my God...

What's up with Ava??? She's probably the most annoying movie character I've ever seen in my life! Neurotic, overbearing and finicky, I felt smothered by her and I was only watching her on screen lol.

Can't believe how Brett jumped through hoops to be with her. Talking about masochism.

The Kyle guy was attractive and charming but redundant. What was the purpose of his character?

Her sister kept talking about her dead husband.

No chemistry between any of the actors.

The script sometimes didn't make sense and the pace was too fast at times.

All in all, I stopped watching about 55 minutes in as I couldn't believe the movie was getting worse and worse by the minute.

The bads:

1. I've never watched Travis Fimmel in any other project so I'm not sure if he looked drunk throughout the entire show because of his personal acting style or because of the role. It almost felt like the actor himself was drunk.

2. It started with an interesting idea but gradually got more and more boring. The ending was anticlimactic for me. I expected more of a plot twist or maybe a more shocking/twisted reason as to why Isabel was killed. She was killed because she tried to protect those boys and she was found out. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly plausible reason as to why she died but not an interesting or suspenseful one. I would have rathered if maybe her father or her sister had killer her instead; that would've been more upsetting but more climactic.

3. The pace was slow. I think they should have condensed it to fewer episodes.

The goods:

1. I really like how they touched upon the slavery/racism problem lots of modern countries like Australia still face in this day and age.

2. The Australian backdrop is wild yet stunning.

3. Travis Fimmel is eye candy.

This movie left me confused...

1. Sam Clafflin looked out of his depth? I feel like he didn't want to be a part of this movie but someone forced him to?

2. There was no chemistry between the two leads. It's almost like they chose two random actors and put them together without testing whether they had chemistry or not...

3. They 'fell in love' way too fast. For most of the movie, they were either constantly surrounded by people or had weird interactions with each other which didn't leave enough room for them to bond. Then we got like 10 minutes of them writing the book together and going out and boom they 'fell in love'?

4. What's up with the script? It was very incohesive. It felt like it was written by 5 different people. Not co-written, just written. Almost like: 'hey, I did my part, your turn'; without checking whether the script flowed nicely or made any sense.

5. The two main characters were unlikeable and there was almost 0 character development. Henry is uptight and fussy and Maria is hotheaded with a victim mentality.

The idea had potential but fell short.

I think the overall show was nice. Nice cinematography, decent script and acting (Sam Neill in particular was amazing).

I do have two problems with The Twelve though.

Firstly, Vanessa was unbelievably irritating. She would get pissed off at people for no solid reason. I get it, you may disagree with people but for God's sake let them be; you can't change them anyway.

She was an annoyingly woke SJW who only focused on dumb, trivial things.

Lastly, what's up with the ending? Now please bear with me as I'm trying to make sense of it.

I don't understand why Kate and Diane didn't just simply tell the police that Claire had accidentally strangled herself. That would've been the easiest thing to do instead of going about it the way they did, hiding things, lying etc. They could have given the police the negatives as proof it was an accident.

I mean why did they hide the truth? Kate said it was because she was scared she was gonna be accused of killing her niece given her past but look what happened. She was still found guilty! She also said Diane was scared the police would uncover the truth about what had happened in 1992 had they revealed the truth but since it was a pretty well-hidden secret, maybe they wouldn't have? Just like they didn't in the trial either.

Also, why would Kate and Diane hide the negatives unless Kate was found guilty? Why did Diane end up burning them?

The only 'plausible' explanation I can think of is this. Diane and Kate hid the truth because they were scared Kate was gonna be accused of killing her niece given her mental health diagnosis and her dark art/past. They were scared the 1992 case would be dug up again and the truth would come out about how Kate had accidentally killed Belinda and how her siblings had covered for her. That might have got them all in trouble. They might have thought that denying any involvement in Claire's death would acquit her since there was no body (which Kate had disposed of probably for that reason).

Kate and Diane agreed they would use the negatives as proof only if Kate was found guilty but during the trials Diane found out Kate had a secret affair with Nathan (Diane's ex husband) while married as well as after the divorce and so she decided to take revenge on her for sleeping with Nathan, having killed Belinda and maybe her past antics/odd behaviour by burning them?

Also, why did Nathan lie so much? What was he trying to hide?