April Fools Day

(2008)**

Tragedy strikes when a prank at Desiree’s annual lavish snob party backfires resulting in the death of her friend Milan. Desiree’s brother Blaine, along with 5 other friends quickly agrees to keep the circumstances of Milan’s death a secret. A year later the elitist group all receive ominous notes stating, “I know what you did last summer”. No, I’m just shitting you. The note states that someone has proof of who is responsible for Milan’s death and if that person does not confess they will all be killed. Fortunately nobody confesses and one by one the smug shit-heads are slain.

The likability of the characters in the original April Fools Day (1986) film has been previously noted. In this re-imagining it’s almost as if the script went out of its way to make the characters despicable and unlikable. Instead of characters that we can all relate to, the remake is about a group of kids born in privilege who have never had to want for anything. I suppose it’s an effective strategy in one respect because I quickly hated them all and opened a bottle of wine in anticipation of their deaths. I mean just look at these shitheads;


Tee hee hee, you will never have as much money as us!

Don't you wish you could be me?

With names like Blaine, Milan, and Paris, I felt that they all needed a good Wil Wheaton bible-thumping to the sides of their heads. The decision to make the cast unlikable is an odd choice and almost guarantees that the audience will root for the murderer. Making the characters sympathetic would not have saved this dreadful film, but at least it would have made us care that they were being stalked (e.g., Laurie Strode in Halloween). Instead their deaths do little more than provoke a “Yeah, whatever” level of interest. I’m not a big fan of the original April Fools Day but this remake is just awful.