Saw 'Bed of the Dead' being fond of horror/thriller regardless of budget (even if not my favourite genre), and the cover was cool. The concept, while not original, intrigued. Being behind on my film watching and reviewing, with a long to watch and review list that keeps getting longer, it took me a while to get round to watching and reviewing.
Unfortunately, do have to agree with the low rating and the poor reviews. 'Bed of the Dead' is one of those films that mostly didn't take off enough, starting off interestingly and with promise, but went downhill in the final third particularly where one loses interest and there was a giving up feel. Never judge a film without seeing the whole thing and wanted to not make 'Bed of the Dead' an exception, so gave it a fair chance.
The film is atmospherically and slickly shot generally and the location is also suitably spooky. The music has an ominous feel while being on the obvious side at times. The acting is surprisingly not that terrible, not amazing and some of the interaction could have been more natural but they seemed engaged and not much is overdone.
It starts off promising, despite the outcome being obvious far too early, with some scares and suspense that is timed well and not hurt too much by gratuity. The visual effects are surprisingly not bad, not spectacular but effort was clearly put into it and some of the direction is assured.
Where 'Bed of the Dead' most underwhelms is the writing and story in the second half. The writing is incredibly lazy, it's awkward in dialogue, is gratuitously crude, confused because of not tying things up or going into full detail and doesn't feel complete. The story suffers from a very erratic pace, and gets muddled and ridiculous in the second half. It further suffers from feeling too much like a short film stretched out with a lot of useless padding. The stereotypical characters are as unlikeable as they come, the inconsistent and illogical motivations bring them down further.
For a film billed as a horror, there is very little interesting and not enough that was scary. The scares and thrills are too few later on, barely any even, and are far too predictable, anaemic and weakly timed to make impact, with the chaotic pacing and intrusive sound editing cheapening them significantly. 'Bed of the Dead' in the later stages doesn't engage let alone thrill, the more it progressed the more chaotic but too much just feels chaotic and hasty, predictable and more nonsensical it became with far too many easily foreseeable moments. The ending leaves very little impact, very contrived and not much of one at all.
Overall, could have been so much worse and is watchable but not much exceptional here. 5/10 Bethany Cox
