April Fool’s Day (2008)

Read my review of the original here.

Trailer (this is the best quality video I could find, so you know what we’re in for): 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: It’s the prankiest night of the year! June 23rd (statistically)!

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• April 1, 2007. I remember it well: it was April Fool’s Day, 2007. 
• Holy shit I thought this was a studio release but seems like it was made for SyFy. And then rejected by SyFy because the quality is too poor. 
• So this is a “coming out” party. Like a debutante thing, not a telling your parents you’re gay thing. So way less interesting. 
• I recognize one name in the cast credits: Scout Taylor-Compton, who I believe played Laurie Strode in Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Let’s hope that’s the last we talk about that movie…
• This movie looks like it was shot for PBS. 
• So far is just a bunch of rich kids kind of talking shit about each other and it’s about as interesting as an episode of a Real Housewives show with the sound off and the TV off altogether and you’re in a darkened room which is actually your grave. 
• I have not picked up on anyone’s name. 
• So some people are looking in on a roofied girl being taken advantage of. They bust in and she falls one floor onto a table and dies. Must’ve had weak bones. I truly don’t understand what the “prank” was supposed to be. 

• Oh she died from the roofie complications. 
• This may be more uninteresting than The Town That Dreaded Sundown remake. At least that one was kind of trying to sort of be an actual movie. There’s really nothing of note going on here. Mysterious deadly pranks I guess. Who cares? Not me, and not you, the person reading this, who is also just me. 
• The Cartier’s family mansion looks like a Cheesecake Factory. It probably is because the directors worked there as unpaid overnight security. 
• I only know the name of the jerk family is Cartier because they’ve said it more than 6 times per second so far. 
• Now the group of assholes has been summoned to the dead girl’s grave. The true killer must come forward or they will all die. But obviously it was the guy who put the roofies in her drink and not the others. So case closed, we can stop watching now. 

• I don’t get the ages of these people. One of them just had a debutant ball the year before but now one of them is running for senate. At 19? This was 2008, politics still had some small shred of dignity. 
• You know what shitty movies overuse for a cheap laugh that has a 0% laughter return? A woman falling down. 
• Well so far one dude in the group drowned in his own pool with an inflatable raft 2 inches away and another received a mild shock from a frayed cord in a tiny puddle of water that was somehow fatal. I’ve seen more creative deaths in a crayon factory tour. 
• This movie also greatly benefits from no gore or nudity whatsoever. It’s like they made this for Disney Junior. 

• And here’s a 30-minute slow van chase. It’s like Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare without the rock and/or roll. 
• I bet dollars to dog nuts that Scout Taylor-Straightoutta-Compton is the killer. Mostly because it’s the most obvious thing imaginable. And that all the deaths are pranks on the horrible Cartier siblings. Because, and try to follow my logic here, this movie is called April Fool’s Day. 
• So the climax is a ton of exposition and I’m not really paying attention at all. 
• Oh guess what, it was all a prank to on the Cartier girl to get her to confess to that roofied girl’s death even though they already knew exactly what her cause of death was. Who gives a rat’s prolapsed asshole. 
• Oh and Scout accidentally blows the Cartier girl’s brains out. That was funny. 

Final Thoughts: Well that was brief. This movie reminded me a lot of stuff like Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys or The Gingerdead Man, purely in how unbelievably cheap the actual film looks, but also in overall quality. This is a recurring theme this year but I just don’t understand why this was actually made, unless it was one of those things were they owned the IP and they’d lose the rights unless they shat this out. 

Score: 1 April (out of 10)

Which was Better?: The original is actually good, so it’s no contest.