Review #336: April Fool's Day (2008)
October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #9 - April Fool's Day (2008)
So, a brief disclaimer before starting this review: I was in a bad mood when I watched this movie. I had been looking forward to getting dinner from my favorite local pizza place, but found out at the last minute that they were out of dough so I had to get a pizza from somewhere else. And then that other pizza place, forgot to give me dipping sauce with my breadsticks. I'll try not to let this color my review but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't have liked the movie more if I got to enjoy my favorite pizza while watching it.
I went into this assuming that it was a remake of the 1986 movie by the same name, which I reviewed yesterday; unfortunately, much like when you expect to get your favorite pizza but they run out of dough so you have to settle for something less than, it turned out that this is its own movie, completely unrelated to the one I already reviewed. And much like how the restaurant forgot my dipping sauce, the studio apparently forgot to include the parts of this movie that would have helped it go down easy.
April Fool's Day starts off following a rich twenty-something brother and sister hosting their friend's debutante ball, when the brother Blaine tries to "prank" a female friend Milan by getting her into bed with him while his sister and friends barge into the room with a camera. But the prank goes wrong and Milan falls to her death, and as a result, Blaine loses control of the estate to his sister Desiree (even though Blaine blames Desiree for Milan's death). A year later, Blaine and Desiree- as well as a few other friends who were involved- start getting cryptic and threatening letters, addressed from Milan herself, and one by one the friends start getting killed off. Is this truly Milan getting revenge from beyond the grave? Or is this perhaps all one big April Fool's Day prank?
As I said earlier, this movie was quite disappointing. The basic conceit of the plot (the friends getting stalked and threatened after the death of this girl) was interesting, definitely, but it took a solid 35 minutes before we got to that point. I shouldn't have to sit through a full third of your film before I know what the main thrust of the story is, just like how I shouldn't have to call and complain just to get the dipping sauce that was supposed to come with my breadsticks. (This is just basic storytelling, people!) We're then given another hour of the friends going to and fro, trying to warn each other, finding each other dead, and so on- maybe if I hadn't already seen a hundred movies like this I would have found that more interesting, and maybe if I'd gotten the pizza I really wanted I'd have appreciated it more. But I found it incredibly difficult to pay attention for most of the movie's runtime because it just didn't feel like it was going anywhere.
But, here's the thing. I'm gonna give some spoilers, because (although I don't recommend anybody watch this movie, it's not very good) the last five minutes was actually really, really interesting.
When you consume the amount and type of media I consume, much like how I consume the pizza I like, you tend to pick up on certain things that seem like they're leading to a twist. Sometimes it pays off and you guess the plot and you're pleasantly rewarded, and sometimes- like my dining experience this evening- you end up hoping for something that never comes because someone wasn't doing their job right. In this case, I kept second-guessing myself. Numerous times I'd notice something with my genre savviness and make a mental note of it, but didn't bother to mention it to my wife who was watching with me. (I imagine she, like I, was in a bad mood from the lack of dipping sauce, and didn't want to bring up further disappointment.)
One character is seemingly killed by being run down by a van in a parking garage as he left his office, but I noticed we didn't actually see him die- we saw the van speed past and an explosion of papers into the air, signifying the collision. Just as the pizza place had conditioned me to think I would get everything I paid for, this movie had conditioned me to think the rest of the story was going to be dull and lackluster. Later, when it seems like there are only four of the friends still alive, a scene happens where Blaine and Desiree are hiding in a closet watching the third friend Ryan get murdered. After escaping the murderer, they call the fourth friend, Torrance, to tell her what happened; I remember thinking, "If Torrance is the only one of the four left alive, wouldn't that mean she was the killer?"
Neither of these times, I said anything. Maybe my mouth was too dry from the sauceless breadsticks. Cue the next scene, where Torrance reveals that she was the killer all along! She ties up the brother and sister, pulls out a gun, and unceremoniously shoots Blaine in the chest, complete with blood spatter and everything. I then had the thought, "Wait a minute, Torrance is an actress. We saw her acting in a horror movie scene earlier with blood effects. What if she and Blaine are working together to get Desiree to confess to killing Milan?
I did have the foresight to tell this to my wife, and sure enough, a moment later Desiree starts blurting out a complete confession of how she drugged Milan so she would fall to her death and then she would get control of the estate. So Blaine stirs- he wasn't dead at all! I was right, nobody was dead (except Milan), this was all a trick!
I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had almost forgotten the disappointment that I ate for dinner. But, the movie was coming to a close, and I had one more thought- Torrance is waving that gun around, what if something goes wrong and she actually ends up shooting-
BLAM.
The gun goes off, blowing a hole in Desiree's head. Everyone freaks out. Another prank, gone horribly wrong.
That much of the ending, I thought, was fantastic. Not enough to redeem the whole movie (it WAS quite boring) but enough to get me interested for the last few minutes. But then the very very final sequence involves Blaine back in court, in front of the same judge that took away his control of the family estate due to a prank gone wrong that resulted in a death, and I'm laughing because he's just done the exact same thing again. Except... in this scene, the judge GIVES him control of the estate? I don't understand why. At this point I didn't care. The movie was over, after one final shot of Blaine driving away with a smirk creeping across his face, as if he planned the whole thing. He had the same smirk I imagine the pizza worker had as they "forgot" to give me my dipping sauce, and they laughed behind my back as I drove away without checking.
This movie was pretty dull, and even a great ending twist couldn't redeem it. Go watch the 1986 movie of the same name instead.
Overall Rating: 4/10 Uneaten Dry Breadsticks
Prank of Theseus: Okay, hang on. According to the IMDB trivia, this WAS meant to be a remake of the 1986 original? Or at least, it started out as one. Supposedly the plot was "updated" to bring it to the modern day, but I have to ask- when you change the plot, the characters, the setting, the tone, the quality, and virtually everything except the name, when does it stop being a remake?
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