Let’s get this out in the open right at the start: Bed of the Dead is not a good movie. It is fun, silly, and gory, but for folks who can’t overlook plot holes so big you can drive a truck through ’em, histrionic overacting and leaden dialogue, then this may not be the movie for you.
As scripted by Cody Calahan (whose film Let Her Out I reviewed earlier this week), Bed of the Dead has a simple, genius premise: it’s about a malevolent bed that kills people. Starting with the cold open, we learn the history of a great tree that was used for human sacrifices by a cabal of creepy hooded figures until it was cut down. Alas the wood retains its evil powers even as it is crafted into an absolutely ginormous bed (seriously you could fit an entire family in it). Cut to the modern day when the bed winds up in a burlesque club / fetish hotel (the first of many puzzling elements that don’t quite work that you just accept and go with). Our protagonists are a foursome of twenty-somethings who are celebrating a birthday with an orgy (because of course they are) who wind up paying a huge sum for the privilege of being murdered by an inanimate four poster bed.
It’s clear that Room 18 is off limits for a good reason, but that’s never stopped a pair of idiot man-children. That designation is particularly apt when describing birthday boy Ren (Dennis Andres), who is so aggressively unlikable that you can’t help but anxiously await his death. Thankfully Bed of the Dead moves at lightning speed in its opening half and within a brief time both Ren and Fred (George Krissa) have been dispatched in bloody sequences (Ren’s in particular may have prompted me to cackle, especially in light of director Jeff Maher’s inspired use of falling entrails and slow motion).
With the bro code reduced to pulp, we’re left trapped on the bed with Nancy (Gwenlyn Cumyn) and Sandy (Alysa King, looking distractingly like Anna Kendrick). Here Bed of the Dead introduces its most gonzo, out of left field head trip: the girls discover that their cell phone can call Virgil (Colin Price), the detective working their murder case 2 hours in the future. It makes no sense, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest. Rather than arbitrarily introduce extra bodies to be dispensed with (although this still happens), the narrative shifts into survival strategy mode wherein Virgil tries to help the girls live beyond their expected time of death at 5am. Cue the countdown clock.
Unfortunately Virgil’s scenes are the weakest aspect of the film. Not only is he a complete stereotype (rogue alcoholic cop in a leather jacket nursing a recent personal tragedy), Price and most of the actors portraying police officers are…less than convincing in their roles. There’s a lot of yelling, baaaad dialogue and an extended bit with a sleazy fetish club owner (sporting an amazing dirty moustache) that is on par with direct to video comedies and/or regional dinner theatre.
Bed of the Dead also suffers from a surprisingly anticlimactic finish, which leans too much on Sandy and Virgil’s unconvincing emotional connection and eschews the visual, graphic audacity on display in the first half. When the film is in “fuck yeah” mode, it’s at its silly, demented best. When it tries to pull on the heartstrings and deliver an emotionally satisfactory arc for its least deserving character, it inevitably falls flat.
Still, for folks interested in killing 80 minutes with their brains in park and a willingness to suspend disbelief, Bed of the Dead is your latest favourite guilty pleasure.
Bed of the Dead screened at the London Film Festival.
