April Fool's Day

I remember seeing the box art for this as a wee horror fan of 10. By the time this came out, I'd seen every Friday the 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, and Halloween released up to this point. I was well-versed in horror and already picking up on its tropes. I knew what to expect from a slasher, and I was happy with that ... but that title gave me pause. They couldn't, could they? They wouldn't do the obvious. The ending is what stuck with me all these years, and I never went back to rewatch it. When I logged it on here, I gave it my standard "I know I saw it but I don't remember anything about it" 2.5 star rating. It had been 40 years since I'd seen it last when I stumbled onto it playing on Pluto last night. Being spooky season, and having a bit of decision paralysis, it seemed fortuitous. I knew the twist ending, but I remembered nothing of the rest of the movie besides Amy Steel being in it. I was curious to see how it would play out knowing the ending and having a much more mature eye. Terribly. It went terribly. April Fool's Day sucks. I can only imagine this got an R-rating because of an over-reactive MPAA and the Reagan 80's. It sure didn't earn it on merit. What elements do you expect from an 80's slasher? Sex and violence, of course, and April Fool's Day has none. Every kill, and I do mean every, is off-screen. You see the person in a perilous situation, maybe a shot of the feet of the killer, terrified reaction shot, cut to the next scene. As for anything even remotely sexy, it's as alluring as an insurance commercial. This isn't PG in an 80's way, this is PG in a 2010's way; toothless, sanitized, lacking in anything that even hints at offensive content. It's like the movie was pre-edited for airing on broadcast TV. A slasher movie can be deficient in one or the other of these and still survive. The kills in Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning are notoriously tame compared to the others in the series, while Part VI (which came out the same year as April Fool's Day) is unbelievably chaste, with its one sex scene being fully clothed and looking like the woman is riding a mechanical bull. Both of those movies work, though, because they make sure their other elements are strong enough to carry the load. April Fool's Day doesn't have that. Its characters are paper-thin and mostly annoying, the mystery aspect is obtuse and its resolution is insulting, the acting (apart from Steel and Thomas F. Wilson) is flaccid and lifeless, the pacing is ponderous, and the special effects are corny and cheap. If it didn't have Steel and Wilson in it, watching April Fool's Day would qualify as a violation of the eighth amendment. There isn't even any enjoyment to be had from knowing the twist and seeing if you can follow the clues, because there's no trail of breadcrumbs. Everything about April Fool's Day feels like a minimum-necessary-effort movie cobbled together to get a horror movie into theaters for teenagers to go see. It's a gimmick first, a cash grab second, and a movie last, and it isn't afraid to broadcast those priorities. Save yourself the time. Don't play the fool.