Bed Rest

Honestly, my expectations with these low budget, straight-to-streaming horror films is so low, that I genuinely thought a movie where a woman is bed ridden for most of the runtime (at least supposedly) would be a bad imitation of Gerald's Game. (To be fair, that was also straight-to-streaming).

Instead, Bed Rest is a mishmash of a bunch of different horror films: a ghost story, a person-going-crazy story, a conspiracy, a malignant demon story; it's a lot. Being so much actually kind helped the film, to be honest, as I can't say I was ever bored watching it.

Melissa Barrera gives a better performance than I'd expect for a film that looks this cheap and lit this badly. She's really trying despite the material. The rest of the small cast...not so much. There's something about the line delivery by most of these people that felt off.

As I mentioned before, this movie looks, sounds, and is edited pretty terribly. It overuses the grating jump score note every bad, straight-to-streaming horror film uses (you know the one), even when what we're seeing wouldn't be scary within any definition of the word. The effects are bad, there's no atmosphere...it's just not very good.

And yet, for a random watch on a Wednesday, I didn't truly hate it. 2024 has been so bad for horror, I'll take what I can get.

Bed Rest" is a horror movie that had its moments of suspense and thrills, but it also had its fair share of slow and uneventful parts. The acting of Melissa Barrera was a standout for me, and her performance helped to keep me engaged in the story. The themes explored in the movie, such as pregnancy, lost pregnancy and lost children trauma, trust issues and mental health issues, made it more adult oriented and added depth to the story. However, the movie's reliance on cheap jump scares and strange whispering voices and sounds felt overused and detracted from the overall experience. The ending was not as satisfying as I hoped it would be, leaving me feeling a bit underwhelmed. Overall, while "Bed Rest" has its merits, it is not a movie that I would highly recommend.

Maybe I shouldn't be too unkind as my title suggests, because Bed Rest does have some good moments it's just that there's a lot of empty parts in between. The story sets itself up amiably with the old spooky house and young couple soon to be parents, moving in. We know straight away there's going to be problems for them, she being heavily pregnant and forcibly bed ridden, doctor's orders, and he being a meek geek who couldn't fight off a cockroach. But once the honeymoon openings are over, this movie limps along slower than a North American winter. But thankfully Melissa Barrera, unlike the rest, at least looks as though she wants to be a part of this and her enthusiasm and somewhat noticeable talents are appreciated and vital in holding the viewer's interest during the movie's lengthy down time. And if you can make it through to the last 20 minutes, a reward of sorts can be obtained from there to the end. Hope you can get there.

I will be honest, this movie looked mediocre to me and my thoughts were confirmed after watching the first few minutes. It looked to be an average haunted house movie where a happy family is torn down towards the end. The only thing slightly different was that the wife is pregnant. I stuck with it to see if there was any uniqueness due to that and I'm actually glad I did. Despite the run of the mill introduction, there was actually some intelligence here and there was a lot of substance towards the end. The main actress was very good and she sort of carried this movie on her back. If this movie had the pacing it did towards the last half hour, a lot of people would stick around and enjoy it. The scare factor could have been upped for sure and should have been executed better to be really effective but overall, I would recommend it for a simple horror movie night.

Now, I hadn't actually ever heard about this 2022 horror movie titled "Bed Rest" from writer and director Lori Evans Taylor prior to stumbling upon it here in 2023. And with it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I wanted to see if it was a good horror movie.

It wasn't. Well, I am maybe a bit jumpy on the trigger here, but I found "Bed Rest" to be a rather mundane, monotonous and generic horror movie about a couple being haunted. Yeah, "Bed Rest" didn't bring anything new to the genre, and what transpired on the screen had already been done numerous times in other similar horror movies. So you're not in for a grand horror experience, should you opt to sit down and watch "Bed Rest".

I will say that the acting performances in the movie were good. It was a very small cast ensemble, but luckily they were talented and were able to carry the movie, despite of having a bland script to work with.

Visually then "Bed Rest" was not innovative. It makes use of a couple of jump scares, but that is it. It wasn't making use of a bunch of special effects.

Sure, "Bed Rest" was watchable, but it was a generic attempt at a movie about a haunting.

My rating of "Bed Rest" lands on a four out of ten stars.