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April Fool's Day (2008)

Submitted by Superheidi on 03/31/2008

April Fool’s Day
Written By: Mikey Wigart, Danilo Bach, Phil Flores, Mitchell Altieri
Directed by: Phil Flores, Mitchell Altieri
Featuring: Sabrina Aldridge, Samuel Child, Taylor Cole, Josh Henderson, R. Keith Harris, Joe Egender, Jennifer Siebel, Scout Taylor-Compton
2008, Release Date: April 1, 2008

Joke's on you if you rent this...It’s a very bad remake of a very bad horror film. In the latest bad tradition of stupid teen TV shows where all the kids act and sound like horny, troubled adults, like Gossip Girl and The O.C., we get April Fool’s Day, a badly-made reinvention of the 1986 movie by Danilo Bach and Fred Walton that makes Cruel Intentions seem like Dangerous Liaisons. Seriously, it’s all rich kids playing cruel ‘April Fool’s Jokes’ on each other, living in Beverly Hills Teens luxury, and with names like Milan, Barbie, Chanel, and Blaine. Oh, let’s not forget the gay gossip columnist/teenager Seton Motley. Scout Taylor Compton plays ‘Torrance’, a teenager having her debutante ball at Blaine and Desiree’s mansion. Blaine and Desiree are the ‘Kennedys’ of North Carolina, or wherever the hell they are, and live in opulent and irritating luxury. Well, at Torrance’s party, Desiree and Blaine plan mean revenge on Milan, because she suddenly decided she wants to do charity work (the bitch!). They drug her and Blaine attempts to date-rape her, while Desiree videotapes. Ryan, Seton, Barbie, and Peter all watch too. But the date-rape drugging has gone horribly awry when Milan stumbles and falls over a balcony and dies! Worst of all, Torrance’s party is ruined! Humph!...

Fast forward one year later and everyone gets an invite to go to the cemetery where Milan was buried. From Milan. Blaine and Desiree attend, as do Seton, Barbie, Peter, and Torrance. How could Milan contact them? Isn’t she dead? Who would play such a cruel joke? It’s up to the gang to find out who is up to what before everyone ends up dead. Oh yeah, ‘Milan’ starts killing people, driving huge trucks and being in two places at the same time. The killer really has some goddamn stamina.
I can’t decide what makes this movie worse: the plot or the plot. Or the acting. It’s just so horrific to see the actors have to say what they know are terrible lines, and to see Scout Taylor-Compton give the same bland performance she did in both Halloween and Wicked Little Things. Why is it again people put her in movies? Does anyone like her? Josh Henderson (who also had the privilege of starring in the just-released 2006 nightmarishly stupid Kristin Cavallari horror movie Fingerprints) is really skulking at the bottom of the barrel since he broke up with Ashlee Simpson and started doing bad horror films. R. Keith Harris plays stereotypical bitchy gay man badly, and Taylor Cole is quite possibly the worst character in the entire film as the dumbly ambitious Peter, husband of Barbie and aspiring governor. Sabrina Aldridge does her best Sarah Michelle Gellar impression as Desiree but no cigar kiddo. Joe Egender’s poor, video-obsessed Ryan is the only character that seems worthy of any note or sympathy, yet he too is somehow deviant in his nature. The point is; we have no one to root for, no hero, no heroine. No hope for an audience to connect with anything they are seeing onscreen.
Not that I really blame the actors (except for Scout). I blame “The Butcher Brothers”. Or, as their mommies know them, Phil Flores and Mitchell Altieri. Perhaps if they spent a little less time thinking of awesomely retarded cool director nicknames and a little more time thinking about the plot and direction of their films, they wouldn’t end up making such bad shit. (Their only other film anyone might have remotely seen is the 2006 After Dark Horrorfest entry The Hamiltons, which was so-so)
If and when you decide to watch this film, keep an eye out for what you think is worse: the rather embarrassing scenes of what is supposed to be the bitchin’ dance party at Torrance’s coming out, or, the lame-ass obligatory “twist” at the end that makes me actually want to watch that Sean Penn movie The Game because compared to this, it makes sense. All I know is, it’ supposed to be a slasher, I felt no slashing. The characters are all shallow and stupid, so you care about no one (even Milan), and as far as filmmaking goes as an art, this is so not art or anything remotely close to it. There’s a reason this went straight to video, folks. That reason is that it’s really bad.

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