There’s a particular kind of horror movie that feels less like a film and more like a very long, very loud argument between superstition and Wikipedia. 12 ‘O’ Clock is that movie. Ram Gopal Varma returns to the genre he once helped define and essentially answers the question: “What if The Exorcist, a crime procedural, and an old saas–bahu soap all crashed into each other at 3 a.m. and nobody cleaned up?”
Spoiler: the mess stayed in the final cut.
Cold Open: Murder Grandma, Zero Follow-Through
The movie kicks off with an old lady randomly murdering a pedestrian at night. It’s abrupt, weird, and kind of promising. For a second you think, “Oh, okay, we’re starting strange, maybe this will be fun.”
Then the film never really comes back to that moment in any satisfying way, which is a solid preview of its overall storytelling strategy:
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Introduce something bizarre.
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Stare at it.
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Move on.
It’s like the script was written as a series of jump scares for the outline, and then nobody bothered to connect them.
Enter Gauri: Sleepwalking, Shrinking Personality, Expanding Runtime
We move to Gauri and her family: dad Rao (Makarand Deshpande), mom, kid brother, and grandmother. Gauri begins:
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Sleepwalking
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Acting strange
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Making faces
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Going quiet and withdrawn
In a better film, this would unfold slowly, with mounting dread. Here, it plays like a highlight reel of “Horror Tropes You Might Remember from the 90s.” One day she’s a normal girl, the next day she’s auditioning for “Most Possessed” on a reality show no one asked for.
The unexplained murders in the city continue, including two policemen. Meanwhile, Gauri oscillates between catatonic and “possessed villain in a school play.” There’s no real build-up—just scenes announcing: “She’s worse now. Accept it.”
Doctors, Tantriks, and a Very Tired Psychiatrist
Her parents, like any sensible horror-movie parents, instantly go on a medically irresponsible world tour of solutions.
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Doctor: shrugs, can’t help.
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Tantrik/Baba: declares she’s possessed and starts beating her in the name of exorcism.
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Parents: “We draw the line at child assault. Only emotional trauma from here, thanks.”
So Rao then goes to a psychiatrist, Dr. Debashish (Mithun Chakraborty), who diagnoses Gauri with dissociative personality disorder and very earnestly claims she can be treated.
This sets up what could’ve been an interesting clash: science vs superstition, psychology vs possession. Instead, the movie bounces between them like a confused ping-pong ball, eventually deciding:
“What if everyone is wrong, everything is haunted, and also we kill a lot of side characters for fun?”
A doctor and his nurse are murdered, because of course they are. Gauri starts talking in a manly voice and cheerfully informs her parents that she committed all the city murders. At this point, Rao’s expression accurately mirrors the audience’s: “I did not sign up for this much nonsense.”
Meet Babu: Psycho Killer, Now in Teen Girl Format
We eventually learn Gauri is “possessed” by Babu, a psycho killer shot dead in an encounter by policeman Francis D’Souza (Manav Kaul) a year earlier. His spirit conveniently found Gauri when she walked past the cemetery like it was picking the next host on a demonic dating app.
Francis himself is understandably rattled by this revelation, which is delivered in Gauri’s deep “manly voice” that sounds less like a spirit and more like someone doing a late-night radio impression.
Babu explains that:
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He possessed Gauri.
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Other spirits are helping him commit murders.
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He’s not leaving.
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This body is his new rental, thanks.
It should be chilling. Instead, it plays like a very long villain monologue from a 2003 TV serial, complete with the “you thought I was gone, but I’m back” energy.
Francis: From Encounter Specialist to Haunted House Tour Guide
Francis reports all this to the Commissioner, who reacts like a classic script device:
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Step 1: Laugh it off.
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Step 2: Put Francis on leave.
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Step 3: Above all, do not escalate the plot.
Francis then goes full tragic arc by… killing his wife and shooting himself, apparently while possessed. It’s meant to show the reach of the spirits and the seriousness of the situation. Instead, it feels like the writers realized they had Manav Kaul for limited days and decided, “Right, let’s exit him with maximum melodrama and minimum explanation.”
Debu vs. Babu: The Ghost Wins on Points
Dr. Debashish is brought in again to meet Gauri/Babu. Babu flexes his supernatural muscles by speaking in the voice of Debu’s dying mother, because nothing screams “demonic power” like weaponized emotional blackmail.
At this point, Debu and the Commissioner can no longer deny something weird is happening. They confront Babu, who calmly announces:
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He will never leave Gauri.
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He will continue killing.
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Other spirits have been doing the extracurricular murders.
There is a whole other movie buried in that sentence, about multiple spirits teaming up for a paranormal killing spree. Sadly, 12 ‘O’ Clock is not interested in that movie. It’s interested in talking about that movie. A lot.
The Exorcist (Budget Version), Then No More Options
The group reluctantly returns to the tantrik, who delivers a line about there being “darkness beyond the light” and educated people seeing only the light. This could have been an interesting critique of rational arrogance. Instead, it’s basically a preamble to:
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The tantrik getting possessed.
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The tantrik dying.
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The story losing another character without gaining anything new.
After killing off everyone who might help, the movie throws up its hands and says:
“Well, obviously, we need to kill the girl.”
This is… a choice.
Solution: Kill the Host, Call It Justice
With no way to prove anything supernatural to the public (and honestly, with the film doing a poor job of proving it to us), the Commissioner, Debu, and Gauri’s parents decide that the only way to stop Babu is to kill the vessel: Gauri herself.
So Rao and his wife go home, distract Possessed Gauri, douse her, and immolate her while Debu and the Commissioner watch like they’re overseeing a terrible group project.
The scene should be horrific, emotionally shattering. Instead, it feels abrupt and weirdly hollow, because Gauri herself has barely been a character for most of the film—just a puppet for Babu and a punching bag for the plot.
Final Message: Ghosts 1, Psychiatry 0
In the end, Dr. Debashish writes a letter to his daughter about the supernatural incident, concluding that there is more out there than rational thought, and that the supernatural does, in fact, exist.
And that’s the closing note:
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Not “we failed a vulnerable girl.”
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Not “the system failed everyone.”
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Not “maybe we should rethink policing, medicine, or belief.”
Just:
“By the way, ghosts are real. Stay spooky, beta.”
It’s like the entire movie existed so one man could change his stance on the paranormal. A two-hour TED Talk featuring arson.
Performances: Everyone Doing Different Movies
The cast is stacked with talent:
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Mithun Chakraborty gives Debashish a tired gravitas. You can almost see him thinking, “I have acted across decades and genres, and now I am here, arguing with a ghost inside a teenager.”
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Manav Kaul tries to inject some intensity into Francis before the script yeets him out of existence.
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Makarand Deshpande brings Rao a frantic, desperate energy that occasionally hints at a better, more emotional film buried somewhere under the clutter.
Unfortunately, the direction and writing seem to want everyone at different emotional volumes. Some scenes feel like prestige drama, others like daily soap, and others like an over-the-top horror spoof—all within the same five-minute stretch.
Horror? Or Just Loud Things With Ghosts?
For a horror movie, 12 ‘O’ Clock is surprisingly light on genuine scares. It relies heavily on:
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Sudden loud sounds
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Possessed-voice talking
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Occasional murders dropped into the plot like post-it notes
There’s no careful tension-building, no real sense of escalating dread. Just a series of “and then this happened” scenes stitched together with lectures about rationality vs the supernatural.
Final Verdict: Time Check – It’s Still Not Scary
12 ‘O’ Clock feels like it started as a halfway decent concept—a crime-horror blend about a cop haunted by a killer’s vengeful spirit—and then got drowned in lazy writing, tonal whiplash, and a desperate need to declare “science doesn’t know everything” without earning it.
If you want:
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Coherent horror
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Emotional stakes
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Or even just a possession story that doesn’t end with “let’s burn the teenager and write a letter about ghosts”
…this probably isn’t it.
Think of it as a supernatural PSA that accidentally turned into a feature film: at the stroke of 12, bad writing appears, logic dies, and everyone agrees that yes, the supernatural exists—and no, it still doesn’t make this movie good.
