At the centre of 12th Man is a group of friends, whom we are told are still very close, years after college. But in all those initial scenes involving them, we wonder whether they are friends or game show participants who are plotting against each other and gossiping behind each others' backs. If this was not enough, the feeling is further accentuated when the film itself shifts into a game show mode with the characters viewing each other with suspicion.
The eleven friends, including their spouses, have got together at a hill station resort to celebrate the bachelor party of the last unmarried person in the group. But the celebratory mood, despite interruptions from a perpetually drunken stranger (Mohanlal), quickly disappears when they decide to play a game to prove that they do not have any secrets to keep from each other. Soon, it appears that most of the people in the group have secrets which could put their friendship in jeopardy. A death which happens later in the night further complicates matters.
In 12th Man, Jeethu Joseph returns yet again to the thriller genre, his most comfortable space, but the script written by K.R.Krishnakumar, based on Sunir Khetarpal's story, brings back memories of the many movies based on Agatha Christie's works. The classic signs of this are in the isolated setting cut off from the outside world, and in the plot where one among a group dies leading to all of the remaining becoming suspects. On top of this familiar setting has been placed a novel idea derived from the much remade Italian film Perfect Strangers, in which a group of friends at a get-together play a game revealing the contents of all the calls and messages that they receive during that time.
