Alitée

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.

Tldr; don't waste your time with this submid movie.

I cannot understand why anyone was raving about this lukewarm mess or why it garnered any high reviews here, unless someone paid for them. A grotesque lack of explanation for a series of illogical setup decisions, coupled with a last-minute plot twist that felt like it wasn't even in the script until halfway through filming because it had zero foreshadowing whatsoever, all amount to an uninteresting slog of a film that's barely worth the talent of the main cast. The jump scares are few, unimpactful and badly timed, there's barely any suspense and what little drama there is comes strictly from a cliché stereotype of a strained marriage. Trying to shoehorn some kind of "letting go" moral into the narrative just made it even clumsier and obnoxious, especially since said moral barely gets referenced again when the supernatural elements actually start playing out. One could easily cut off the first two thirds of the movie and make a much better short film out of just the last twenty minutes or so, since everything relevant to the climax of the plot only comes out at that point. Worse still, it's not bad -enough- to be entertainingly bad, no horrifically bad acting or overly ridiculous practical effects to laugh at, no scenery-chewing or overacting to give it any charm. Overall, the movie just feels like it was thrown together as they were filming by someone too convinced of their own brilliance to accept that they had no clue what they were doing and released with an unironic "nailed it" afterward like a cinematic cake wreck. It's not awful but it's simply not good at all.

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 have to admit, Melissa Barrera was the reason why I decided to watch that movie, because I really loved her on the "Scream" movies. The plot of the movie was very interesting and kinda innovative. The storyline was well-written and everything was well-explained, even though it was kinda simple. The characters were very interesting, well-developed and kinda likeable. The filming location of the movie was just a big old creepy house in the middle of nowhere. The casting was really good and their acting was descent (Melissa Barrera was as good as always). In my opinion, it was a kinda scary movie and there were many jumpscares. The ending scene was definitely unpredictable and I really enjoyed the plot twist. Overall, it was a nice horror movie, very creepy, kinda intense and I would probably recommend it to my friends.

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.