Snooty rich girl Taylor Cole plays a nasty prank on rival Sabrina Aldridge at a debutante ball. The joke goes horribly wrong, though, when its target has an allergic reaction to a “date rape” drug (ho, ho. The hilarity!) she has been given which leads to her death. Everyone complicit in the prank ends up escaping charges, somehow. A year later, they all receive invitations to the victim’s grave, where they are warned in an anonymous letter that they will all die if no one comes forward to take responsibility for the murder! Like, OMG and everything! Scout Taylor-Compton plays one of the mean girls, who is an aspiring actress.
I wasn’t a fan of the spoofy 80s original and this 2008 version, not all that similar to the original, isn’t any better, though at least it didn’t go down the jokey cop-out route of the first film. Actually, what this film comes up with might be worse, it’s “Gossip Girl” with a bit of blood thrown in. Nothing against that TV show, it’s probably one of the least objectionable teen shows of recent years, but don’t screenwriters understand basic principles of engaging storytelling anymore? We need characters to care about! This film gives us a bunch of unlikeable bimbos and himbos, and it’s yet another horror film populated by characters I simply couldn’t relate to. These characters probably deserve to die, but I couldn’t muster up enough interest in them to care to even see them perish (unlike say, the underrated “Captivity”). Beauty queens, gossip columnists (gay to boot, ala Perez Hilton I guess), rich jerks and young Republicans- Why are we meant to care about any of these horrible people?
These people suck, they do sucky things, and do it in a sucky manner, with the least objectionable character getting bumped off early. And that pretty much sums up a lot of horror films these days, unfortunately, especially American ones. Who cares about the snooty and affluent in a horror film? No one! And if you really had to do it, just cast The Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and some of the bimbos from “The Hills”. I could get some enjoyment out of seeing some of them getting knifed. Instead we get a bunch of lifeless no-namers and Scout Taylor-Compton, one of the worst actresses of the modern era. By the way, the film is called “April Fool’s Day” and Compton plays an aspiring actress- you do the math. Scout Taylor Incompetent is more like it. Lead actress Cole, meanwhile has a scene where she attempts to cry. I swear the phenomenon of crying seems absolutely foreign to her, because she is completely incapable of rendering a cinematic impression of such an emotional response.
Meanwhile, for a film claiming to come from writer-directors known as The Butcher Brothers (a pseudonym, apparently for Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores- not even brothers!), they sure as hell don’t give us a film that lives up to the promise in their names. The film actually has an off-screen electrocution! Off-screen! Are you kidding me? Is this “Hannah Montana” or something? I’m no gore-hound, but Gen-Y horror really does stink, doesn’t it? When we finally do get a bloody murder, it turns out only to be a movie-within-a-movie. Really pathetic stuff.
OVERALL SUMMARY
It’s even worse than the tepid “Prom Night” remake, I’m afraid. One of the worst horror films of the last five years, in fact. And that’s no joke.
