Directed and written by Lori Evans Taylor (she produced 216 episodes of Lucky Dog, a Saturday morning show that I have watched and cried through many times and she’s the writer for the upcoming Final Destination 6), Bed Rest skipped theaters and went right to Tubi, where we discover that Julie (Melissa Barrera, Scream) and Guy Rivers (Guy Burnet) have moved into a new home just a few months before she’s due to have their first child. She has some issues with her pregnancy and is moved to mandatory bed rest — the title does not lie — but then there are ghosts troubling her from bedside. Or, as my wife said as she walked in to this, “Is this another one of those dumb Amityville movies you’re obsessed with?”

Julie has lost a baby before and has some past mental health issues, which now it seems like she’s seeing a five-year-old child in her house, the same age as the boy she lost. Yet when that boy tells her that someone is coming for her baby, that’s when this kicks into gear.

There may have been other children murdered in the home, but is there really a haunting? Is this all in our protagonist’s mind? Are her husband and nurse Delmy Walker (Edie Inksetter) just gaslighting her into better mental health? Will I watch everything that Tubi has as one of their originals?

In your heart, you know the answer.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I have to confess, I was pretty excited about the idea of this movie: a robotic Santa let loose on a small town on Christmas Eve, directed by Joe Begos (VFW, Bliss).

But man, I feel like when I unwrapped this gift, it was filled with coal.

We start with a RoboCop-style series of TV ads for holiday products and a news report that claims that a robotic Santa that’s been recalled because it was originally a military robot and it goes back to its programming because of a glitch.

Great, I’m on board.

But then we have half an hour of record store owner Tori Tooms (Riley Dandy, who has also been in the holiday movies A Hollywood Christmas, A California Christmas: City Lights and A Kiss On Candy Cane Lane) and her employee Robbie Reynolds (Sam Delich) arguing over her Tinder date, getting drunk, arguing about the multiple versions of Black Christmas, getting drunk, arguing about the Unsolved Mysteries soundtrack, getting high, arguing about Pet Sematary 2, getting drunk, swearing every other word (the movie has 487 uses of the word fuck), getting drunk some more, visiting their friends Lahna (Dora Madison) and Jay (Jonah Ray from the new Mystery Science Theater 3000) before they all do coke together and that couple has sex in the toy store where they work and get killed by the robotic Santa, argue about bands and oh yeah, end up having sex.

Abraham Benrubi, who plays the evil Santa, was once the monstrous Kubiac on Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and Jerry on ER. He has holiday experience as well, as he played the role of Santa — a nicer one — in A Country Christmas.

This all ends up feeling like someone making a cover version of a Rob Zombie movie, a fact helped by the fact that no one talks like anyone else in this movie in real life, that Jeff Daniel Phillips shows up and that everything feels covered with neon filth. And that’s fine if that’s your thing, but just because you throw a bunch of Vinegar Syndrome posters into your movie and shoot it on 16mm doesn’t mean I have to like it.

In fact, it gets so Terminator at one point that the soundtrack realizes it and starts sounding like it came from that movie.

I guess I wanted too much out of this movie, expecting a movie that skewered holiday films while bringing back the feeling of holiday horror movies that I love. Instead, I was forced to be the third wheel on a date between two people who barely know their references — Lemmy didn’t do “Run Rudolph Run” with the Foo Fighters, he did it with Dave Grohl and Billy Gibbons — and are annoying as they bray on and on about their barely coherent pop culture signifying lives and unconcerned that everyone around them is forced to hear just how annoying they are, as if they’re in a contest to see who I can dislike more.

This is also the kind of film that will get breathlessly hyped on Twitter as something new and fresh and 16mm, dude. Don’t follow — make your own opinions. In fact, you might just love this. I don’t know why or how, but you do you.

Mark and Lawrence Zubia grew up in a large Mexican-American family in Arizona and started their music careers in their dad’s mariachi band before forming several bands in Tempa, the same scene that contained Jimmy Eat World, Gin Blossoms and The Refreshments. In fact, Pistoleros was the band that ex-Gin Blossoms leader Doug Hopkins formed after leaving that band, but Hopkins had addiction issues and took his life six months after starting their band.

The movie that director Steven Esparza was making is way different than what he planned. On the first night he met the band, thinking he was capturing their comeback, the band was already split. Esparza told AZ Central, “No one knew Lawrence had fired him at that point, that Mark was upset and they were just basically going backwards again.” That’s because Lawrence and Mark were estranged for nearly a decade after what Lawrence describes as a six-year, self-destructive downward spiral fueled that started after recovering from back surgery.

Even though the brothers would work out their demons and their band, sadness came back into their lives when on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2020, Lawrence died of pancreatitis after contracting pneumonia while recovering from surgery.

This film is a rough but necessary watch. The Zubia Brothers had a love and hate relationship that also had to deal with being in a band, touring and drugs. Through meeting and interviewing Lawrence and Mark and their fellow bandmates and other bands in their scene, as well as journalists, friends and even doctors, you gain the full and complicated story while getting to learn why their music was so important.

You can get this from MVD.

Two former astronauts alongside a conspiracy theorist who discover the hidden truth about Earth’s moon.

The secret of the moon.

Yes, I said it.

I’ve also said that this is the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen and just imagine, I’ve seen 118 Jess Franco movies and 46 Bruno Mattei films and therefore have to come some kind of degree in stupid.

Jocinda “Jo” Fowler (Halle Berry) and Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) were once in NASA together and a space shuttle mission they were on barely made it home when the moon — yes, the moon, let me reiterate this to drum up excitement for the moon’s big hidden lie — attacks them. No one believes him, so he’s disgraced while she moves up to be NASA’s deputy director.

Brian is reduced to dealing with his unruly son, his ex-wife and K.C. Houseman (John Bradley), the only other person in the world that believes that the moon is evil.

The moon is evil.

Brian also learns that he was made to look like a tin foil hat wearer because NASA has been covering up the moon all the way back to the first moon landing, even creating a device to destroy whatever lives inside the hollow moon — which is even better than hollow Earth or flat Earth, yes? — but budgets got too high and instead of maybe not sending hundreds of billions to neo-Nazis fighting our Communist enemies and trust me, no one is right and everyone is horrible and that’s my political stance they just canceled the one thing that could save the Earth.

I’m going to save you the trouble of watching this and reveal the secret of the moon.

The secret of the moon!

The moon is a Dyson sphere — a megastructure that completely encompasses a white dwarf star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output — to become a starship. Billions of years ago, humanity’s technologically advanced ancestors were eradicated by a rogue AI — ancient aliens! — and basically sent the moon out to create all life on Earth but the evil AI followed. It just took a few million years to get back and start killing our planet.

Can we save the Earth? Of course.

Is a cat named Fuzz Aldrin? Yes.

Did this cost more than any independent movie ever? You know it.

Emmerich has talked about filming two sequels back-to-back and Bradley said that “If Roland goes down the direction that he wants to,  the sequels would be even more batshit crazy than the first.” Emmerich said, “I’m also not very high on sequels. But I tried this time to make this a trilogy, but I am not sure even if I want it anymore. I think if I do a sequel, I will make it a little bit more like the original Star Wars, the second one will have a huge cliffhanger. Because that’s totally lost on people.

This failed on a monumental level but man, I want those sequels to happen.

Donald Sutherland also totally is in this for two minutes as if it’s an 80s movie made in Italy.

Lindsay Lohan was once on top of the world, but over the last few years, her career has struggled. From Georgia Rule all the way back in 2006 up until The Canyons, Liz & Dick and I Know Who Killed Me, she’s been more involved in the tabloids than starring in films. On the advice of Oprah, she got back to work and made the reality show Lindsay, did stage work in London, was a judge on the Australian Masked Singer and started opening beach clubs in Greece where she did another reality show, Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club. Now, Netflix has given her a multi-movie deal and it’s already paid off, as Falling for Christmas has had great ratings for the streaming platform and the next film she plans on doing is another romantic comedy, Irish Wish.

I may have said it before, but my dream for Lohan is to follow the career of Carroll Baker and head to Italy to make giallo movies with Umberto Lenzi, but sadly this is no longer an option. And if you read my review of I Know Who Killed Me, you already know that she’s done well in a psychosexual murder mystery.

That means that Falling for Christmas is a let-down for me, but I get it. It’s a more successful career path making tried and true romantic holiday movies than it is having a masked killer haunting you through Rome, catching light across your eyes with the glint of a razor blade.

But hey — Lohan does well as spoiled heiress Sierra Belmont — daughter of ski resort owner Beauregard (Jack Wagner from the soaps and the singer of “All I Need”) — and when she’s in a skiing accident and loses her memory, she goes Overboard on ice with nice guy Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet from Glee).

Speaking of singing soap opera stars, this was produced by Michael Damian.

The debut movie from director Janeen Damian, thsi was written by Jeff Bonnett and Ron Oliver, wjho wrote Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou and wrote and directed Prom Night III: Last Kiss. That’s probably the one surprise of this movie which delivers exactly what you want it to, including Lohan recreating the time she sang “JIngle Bell Rock” in Mean Girls and, much like Just My Luck, overflowing a washing machine and falling in love with a guy named Jake.

I don’t begrudge Lohan getting to get a comeback. Here’s hoping that one of these Netflix movies is a remake of So Sweet, So Dead.

Father David (Graham Skipper, the director of Sequence Break) is a devout priest who has never missed a Mass, never eaten meat on a Good Friday and never misses the opportunity to speak on God’s love, including when he invites Terry (Jeremy Gardner, the director of After Midnight and the man who told his mother not to watch this movie) and Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke, Gardner’s real-life wife) to stay during the holidays.

It starts as a simple act of kindness and nothing can go wrong, right? But throw in a game of never have I ever, then have a good man — in his head if perhaps not as much in his heart — get tempted and things are ready to go off the rails.

Director and writer Eric Pennycoff also made Sadistic Intentions, which starred Gardner and Zaudtke, and he puts together a movie with a small cast, a smart script and a mix of madness and black humor as the priest finds himself in a place — and perhaps a position — that he had never prepared for.

I also loved Rigo Garay, who plays RIgo the organ player, perhaps the only character brave enough to tell Father David that he hasn’t had a parishioner attend Mass in weeks and that he’s just been giving sermons to an empty church. But if that’s true, who are the prophetic — and perhaps Satanic — voices who come to confession? And what’s with the young padre’s frequent confessions of his own to that horrifying painting?

There’s an incredible moment near the end where an off-the-deep-end Father David throws on his vestment and rants on the altar while arguing with a red-lit Terry — or a vision of him — before learning that — and this is the biggest spoiler warning I can give — that the real Terry has beaten his wife and snorted David’s mother’s ashes.

I mean, this is a movie that has a priest with his head wrapped up straight out of Threads losing his mind and a last shot that will make you think long after the Christmas carol-scored credits run out.

The Arrow Video blu ray release of The Leech has two commentary tracks, one with with writer/producer/director Eric Pennycoff and producer Scott Smith and the other recorded live at the Chattanooga Film Festival; a virtual Q&A with director Eric Pennycoff and the cast at the 2022 Chattanooga Film Festival; Preaching to the Void, a brand new visual essay exploring The Leech and Pennycoff’s earlier films by critic Anton Bitel; The Voice of Reason, a brand new video interview with Pennycoff and actor Graham Skipper; an introduction and Q&A from the film’s international premiere at FrightFest 2022; exclusive introductions to the film by Pennycoff and Skipper; The Making of The Leech; Rigo’s music video; three short films by Pennycoff, Unfortunate, The Pod and Phase II; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Haunt Love and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Julieann Stipidis. You can get it from MVD.

You can also stream this movie on the Arrow player. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.