Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 21, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The fact that the remake of April Fool’s Day is credited as being “Written by Michael Wigart, based on a screenplay by The Butcher Brothers”—the latter of whom directed—begs a couple of questions. To wit, what does it mean that the filmmakers were apparently rewritten on their own movie? And why no acknowledgment of Danilo Bach, who scripted the 1986 original? As it happens, the new April Fool’s has nothing beyond the basic premise to do with its predecessor, and it lacks the character-based tension and morbid wit of the Butchers’ independent breakout feature The Hamiltons. Instead, the movie plays like a 90-minute Halloween episode of Gossip Girl, or perhaps another direct-to-disc entry in Sony’s I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise.
An inordinate amount of time—nearly the film’s first third—is spent on the prologue, which takes place in a North Carolina mansion stocked with attractive young people speaking in come-and-go Southern accents. The place belongs to wealthy orphans Desiree (Taylor Cole) and Blaine (Josh Henderson), who are hosting the coming-out party of aspiring actress Torrance (Halloween’s Scout Taylor-Compton). Actually, Desiree reveals in a line of dialogue that the whole thing is a setup, but for whose benefit and to what purpose is never made entirely clear. The best one can guess is that the siblings are going to an awful lot of trouble to play an April Fool’s Day prank on gorgeous blonde Milan (Sabrina Aldridge), but for purposes of the plot, the perpetrator of that jest isn’t made clear at the beginning. In any case, the gag goes inevitably and fatally wrong for poor Milan.
Cut, just as inevitably, to a year later, when Desiree, Blaine and several of their friends receive anonymous notes directing them to meet at Milan’s grave. It seems somebody—perhaps Milan, not really dead after all?—knows what one of them did last April and wants the guilty party to turn him- or herself in, or else they’ll all pay the ultimate price. That somebody also arranges for them to witness video of one of their acquaintances who was also on the scene that night, and who can’t swim, being tricked into drowning in his backyard pool. That, and the discovery of the man’s corpse when they go to his house, throws the group into a tizzy, and they start suspecting each other of being the culprit, though none of them express any suspicions about why a guy who can’t swim has a backyard pool.
Soon more bodies are being discovered and more apparent clues are coming to light, and by about the halfway point, it couldn’t be more obvious where the story is headed, even for those who haven’t seen the original film. One consequently waits for some kind of distraction, be it an unexpected twist in the narrative, a stylistic flourish or even just an inventive death setpiece. But April Fool’s Day is bloodless in all senses of the word; it should surprise no one who has read this far that the only seriously gory moment proves to be a fakeout. Instead, it’s all tame, PG-13-level murders and glossy surfaces, with the occasional funny bit but no real scares, and performances that, those uneven drawls notwithstanding, are perfectly decent given the limitations of the material. (Hamiltons co-star Samuel Child, playing an aspiring politician with an appropriately sharklike smile, is the only one who really seems to be having fun with his role.)
The shame of it is that an updated April Fool’s Day had possibilities, given the potential for electronic trickery and subterfuge inherent in today’s technology. Heck, they could’ve even done a straight retelling and this time included the entire final act that wound up being deleted wholesale from the ’86 version. Instead, we’re left with yet another movie that behaves as if simply appropriating a time-tested title is enough to justify its existence, and puts little effort into distinguishing itself. Only because it fits in with the movie’s general predictability would I even dare to leave off with this comment: If you’re looking for originality or surprises in this April Fool’s Day, the joke’s on you.
