April Fool’s Day (2008) Movie Review
Written By: TJ
Edited By: Grave Reviews Staff
Film Information
Director: Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores
Producers: Tara Craig, Frank Mancuso, Jr.
Screenwriters: Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, et. al.
Date Released: March 25, 2008
Cast:
Taylor Cole as Desiree Cartier
Josh Henderson as Blaine Cartier
Scout Taylor-Compton as Torrance Caldwell
Joe Egender as Ryan
Jennifer Siebel as Barbie Reynolds
Samuel Child as Peter Welling
Joseph McKelheer as Charles Lansford
Frank Aard as Wilford
Sabrina Ann Aldridge as Milan Hastings
Rating = 1/5 Graves
***May contain some spoilers***
Synopsis
On the first day of April 2007, the rich siblings Desiree and Blaine Cartier (Cole & Henderson) throw a party for their friend’s debut. Little did everyone know, it is just a cover-up for a prank they’re about to pull on Milan Hastings (Aldridge), the good girl who never get along with Desiree. Unfortunately, the prank goes horribly wrong and the drugged Milan had a seizure and fell on the balcony, resulting for her immediate death. Exactly a year after, the seven people who participated in that prank gets a letter that says “I have proof”, warning them to confess who killed Milan or they will die one by one. After dismissing it as an empty threat, it is not long before the body count rises. Now everyone is asking, who is responsible?
Gore Factor
April Fool’s Day (2008) will just bore you to death if you’re looking for a real horror movie with lots of blood and carnage. Even if you’re just after the chilling factors of this genre, you will be disappointed. To be clear, there is nothing much to see or to be enjoyed here. Just the usual knick-knacks of drowning in the pool, being electrocuted, and as the directors claim to be as a ‘lethal’ paper cut. There’s barely even enough blood to fill a teacup in this film. Everything that is supposed to be an aesthetic aspect such as makeup and the likes are not convincing and in literal sense, it is just a lame excuse for a slasher-movie remake.
The Grave Review
After the success of the 1987 original April Fool’s Day, it has been widely regarded as a modern horror classic. In 2008, the Butcher Brothers took the director’s chair in remaking the film but sadly, it’s nothing like the original. A good remake should stay true to the spirit of the source material and at the same time, add something new to the story. However, the directors followed a wrong approach by deleting almost every scene that makes the original good, resulting for the remake to fail epically.
April Fool’s Day (2008) is embarrassingly lazy and disposable remake possible. The absence of tension, scares, and the bland deaths of the characters will make every second of the 91-minute running time excruciatingly boring. The attempt to pull a twist in the spirit of the original in the finale does not make much of sense without the original context, therefore just leaving the audience in confusion and disgust.
Some critiques say that April Fool’s Day (2008) can’t be actually called a remake since it did not follow any of the original’s plot. It can only be considered as a standalone film of an elaborate revenge scheme which only used the title to make money on the cinema. This film seems like an experimental version of the original to see if it can create another classic, but awfully failing to do so.
The dialogues sounds like they came straight out of a cheap comic book, and if the setup didn’t make you reach for the off switch, the boring middle segment of slasher formula will. The Butcher Brothers are actually Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, such pseudonym will make you think of visual brutality or reckless cinematic approach, but this film will make you think otherwise.
On the other hand, it’s comforting to see familiar actors onscreen but their chiseled and beautiful faces did not save them from the sloppiness of the film and their unimpressive acting. Not a single actor is likeable nor commendable, not even Milan (Sabrina Aldridge) who is supposed to be the “good girl” in the story. Another drastic change in this remake is that instead of regular college kids, they’ve become socialites whom the audience can’t root for or relate to.
For the foregoing reasons, Grave Reviews gives April Fool’s Day (2008) one grave out of five graves.
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