April Fool’s Day



On April 1st Desiree throws a big debutante ball for her friend Torrance, and she’s invited everyone who’s anyone to be there. But really, the huge party is just a front for a ‘prank’ she wants to pull on her rival, Milan. Why does she hate Milan? Who knows. But her plan is to let her brother Blaine take advantage of Milan once she’s had a couple drinks, all while she films the whole thing with the intent of putting the footage on the internet. She and some of her closest cohorts watch from the sidelines, laughing and giggling the whole time. But the prank goes horribly awry when it turns out that Milan was also drugged and has an adverse reaction to the roofie, falls off the balcony and dies.


Great prank, you guys.

Over one year later and everyone involved had continued on with their lives and still no one has been charged with any wrongdoing in Milan’s death. And as it turns out someone finds that little oversight to be very disturbing. So on the one year anniversary of Milan’s death, everyone involved receives a message telling them that if the person responsible doesn’t confess to their crime, then all of them will be killed by the end of the day. And they are dead serious.



All right, so usually I mark April as my Foreign Film Month. But since April 1st actually falls on Wednesday this year, and because I’ve had this movie on my watch-list for ages, I figured this would be the perfect time to finally, you know, watch it. Especially since the 1st isn’t going to fall on a Wednesday again for 11 more years (2037 for those who may be reading this some time in the future.) So in case you were wondering, we shall be back to my regularly scheduled programming next week.

Anyway, I guess I should get on with the movie and it’s… Ugh…. Sigh… Okay, here we go… April Fool’s Day is an American horror/thriller/mystery…thing from 2008, and is yet another movie that seems to be a part of that series of loose remakes of 80s films that popped up during the 2000s that nobody asked for. And in this case they really didn’t ask for it because…woof…is this one rough. Considering the kinds of movies I tend to watch here, I generally think I’m pretty fair and lenient with most of the…shall we say suckier ones? I don’t tend to call many things “bad”, since odds are I’ve seen much worse and can at least come up with a couple nice things to say about each film…usually. So I’m certainly not one of those people yelling about how a film like Morbius is one of the worst movies ever, because I’m wise enough to know that the people saying that shit are sheltered, privileged little fairies who have likely never had to sit through the true horror of something like Things before in their entire lives. But this movie…THIS movie… While it might not be Things levels of bad, it’s certainly not something I’d willingly recommend to anyone unless I actively disliked them and wished for them to suffer.



For starters, this is yet another one of those movies where there is literally no one for you to root for. Like, EVERYBODY you’re forced to spend time with sucks. And I don’t even mean that they all suck just a little bit either. I mean that most of these guys are just truly detestable people. You’ve got a handful of petty, pretentious, rich ass-hats, a politician, a stuck-up beauty queen, a snooty gossip columnist, a videographer who takes questionable pictures of people, and an actress. The videographer would be okay if he weren’t so creepy, and the actress actually seems like a semi-decent human being. But since we only spend..eh…maybe 5 minutes with her it’s hard to tell. No, instead we’re forced to spend most of the film watching the two sibling ass-clowns, including the playboy brother who whores around, and his rich-bitch sister. A woman who is so evil that the movie somehow managed to give her a “Karen” haircut, years before the term even existed. And for some inexplicable reason, the movie wants you to think that the brother is somehow the lesser evil of the two and that everybody likes him more, while completely glossing over the fact that he was 100% willing to assault a woman who clearly wasn’t in her right mind, just for the sake of a laugh. So not only are the characters infuriating, but so is the movie’s internal logic. Which means the most likable characters end up being the butler and the dog, mostly because you know they’re the only innocent parties in the whole film, because they’re forced to put up with everyone else’s pretentious bullcrap.


Even more puzzling about the film’s internal logic is how this chick went from that chic hairdo seen in the posters, to thinking that this cut was somehow more fashion forward.

Ultimately though, the movie just winds up being really boring. Though the stories are completely different, if you’ve already seen the 80s film then you’re going to immediately know what’s going on. Because you never actually SEE anyone die. It always happens right out of view, and then maybe Desiree is the only one who “sees” it, maybe not, and if she does then – “POOF!” – the body is gone a couple seconds later, oh my, how mysterious.


Yawn

And I might be able to forgive the predictability if the deaths were at least creative or inventive, or hell, even fun or excessively bloody in any way. You know, just ANYTHING to pique my interest. But they’re not. Which is surprising, because you’d think it’d be easy to get the viewer to at least feel a little cathartic watching all these annoying, stuck-up snots get some righteous comeuppance. But because you never actually SEE anything, and because you’ve likely already figured out what’s happening and who’s doing what to whom, you’re never granted even the briefest sense of smug satisfaction or moral superiority over these fools. Then to top it all off, you’re given one of those implausible endings that only work if the one mastermind behind the whole plan can somehow predict the future movement of everyone else in the film. Which is yet another thing I wouldn’t mind if any of the characters involved could ever be considered a mastermind. But since they all seem as dumb as a rusty sack of nails I have great trouble ever buying that explanation.



Good gravy, what a boring pile of obnoxious tripe. Would you believe that this movie is also supposed to be a comedy? What I was ever supposed to laugh at I have no Earthy idea. Maybe the absurdity of the film expecting me to care about a story involving a bunch of loathsome people and what happens to them. I don’t know, but it wasn’t my idea of fun. If you watched and liked the first April Fool’s Day then I suggest you skip this one and save yourself the frustration. If you haven’t seen the original movie yet, then go see that, because it is by far the better film. But if you’re just curious about all those remakes from the 2000s, then I guess you can suffer through this one if you want. It does have some nice cinematography at times. But I don’t think that alone is enough to build much of a film recommendation on.

April Fool’s Day is available on a variety of streaming services.

April Fool’s Day is also available on DVD and Bluray.

Helpful Links: