Alice Oscura, Featured Writer
Disclaimer: The following contains major spoilers and details about suicide. If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the Suicide Prevention Hotline in your area.
For Day 26 of 31 Days of Horror we have the supernatural horror Bed Rest (2022) starring Scream (2022) actress Melissa Barrera. Shockingly enough, I read in an article published in the NY Post, that Barrera doesn’t really like horror movies. The actress decided to reunite with Scream producers James Vanderbilt, William Sherak and Paul Neinstein for the film because she already knew and loved working with them. The script left the actress in tears, and she said that the story just felt different from your run-of-the-mill horror. Bed Rest was directed and written by Lori Evans Taylor, with Barrera also serving as a co-producer for the film.
The film focuses on Julie Rivers (Barrera) who is seven months pregnant. She is married to university professor Daniel (Guy Burnet) and they have just moved into a massive lakeside house located in upstate New York that requires extensive renovations. During the renovations, one of the workers finds a bracelet down a drain hole and turns it over to Julie. Being an antiques dealer, Julie is intrigued by the bracelet and decides to clean and put it on. As soon as she begins wearing the bracelet, she hears strange whispers and a child giggling in the hallway.
Later on, Julie takes a nasty fall down the stairs after being startled by the apparition of a little boy. Afterward, the doctor puts Julie on complete bed rest until her due date. However, as time passes, a frustrated Julie begins to have more frightening supernatural experiences in the house, including seeing the same little boy as before appearing this time in her unborn baby’s nursery.
The audience soon becomes privy to the fact that this is not Julie and Daniel’s first child. Julie went through a particularly traumatic stillbirth of their son, who they named Andrew, a few years ago. The event caused her to experience a complete nervous breakdown, which required Julie to be institutionalised for a brief period of time. As her experiences get more frequent and vivid, she finally confides in her husband that she believes that the little boy that she keeps seeing is their deceased son Andrew, who would have been around that same age as now. Daniel begins to think that Julie’s mental health is on the fritz again as before and hires a kindhearted mid-wife/nurse named Delmy (Edie Inksetter) to help look after Julie while he is at work.
Julie is eventually able to connect her freakish experiences with the owner of the bracelet that the worker found in the house. Her research leads her to the previous owners of the house, the Kinsey family. The wife and mother Melandra Kinsey, expecting her fourth child, was on her way to the hospital when the car skidded and crashed. The accident claimed the life of her unborn daughter, which sent Melandra spiraling into a manic depression, the result of which led her to killing herself and her three surviving children by drowning them in the bathtub. Melandra’s spirit wants Julie’s unborn baby daughter in the place of her child, and her youngest son Daniel has been trying to warn Julie all this time. Julie goes into labour at the house on her due date and ends up delivering the baby on her own. What happens next is a battle between two mothers, one corrupted in death and one struggling to save the life of her newborn baby girl.
Bed Rest swings back and forth in a way where the audience is left to wonder whether Julie’s experiences are psychological or indeed of a supernatural nature. The more frustrating elements originate from the fact that Julie is the only one, well other than her cat Lou, that’s seeing these spirits. Also, the fact her husband Daniel just immediately concludes that Julie’s mental health might be declining again, is kind of a sore point for me because it just feels like an unnecessary trope that’s been used so many times before that it’s been beaten to death. For eons, pregnant women’s mental health always comes into question because them being hormonal is a contributing factor to mental instability. Oh, please, give me a break with that already!
However, the spooky, tension-filled atmosphere set up by creating some pretty decent jump scares mingled together with the claustrophobic nature of Julie’s situation is an excellent concoction for the Halloween season. Barrera’s dedication to her role as Julie Rivers speaks for itself through her brilliant, emotionally driven performance. One of the greatest flaws of Bed Rest is that it drags on in certain areas while they spend a bit too much time building the story. In the end, it’s all about the main character finding the strength to let go of her past and pain so that she could finally be mentally free to embark on her long-awaited journey to motherhood. Bed Rest is currently available for free on the Tubi streaming platform.
Dark Alice’s Score: 5.5 out of 10
Dark Alice has an old soul and a curious mind. I believe that anyone can be a hero and that the good guys should always win! I dislike cruelty to animals and think that they have far superior qualities to humans. My motto is there is no future without the past. I also have a weird penchant for Paranormal TV shows even though the slightest sound makes me jump. I enjoy writing reviews and throwing in fun facts to pique the readers’ curiosity. My ultimate goal in life would be to become a published writer one day. Read More