April Fool's Day (2008)★★★☆☆

I’m not really sure whether this is technically a remake of the other April Fool’s Day or what. It seems perhaps maybe there was an earlier version of the screenplay that was more closely related to the original? I did notice in the opening credits that there were two listed “based on the screenplay by” credits, in addition to the “screenplay by” credit, so I guess there were at least three versions of it.

There are some interesting similarities between this one and the earlier one, though. Both plots center around a group of rich college kids – in particular, the central character to each is a girl with a weird name starting in M (and much like Muffy, I’ve never met a Milan either). Both take place around April Fool’s Day. Both feature handheld camera footage in some way. Both are horror films. Both are a little ridiculous.

The similarities mostly stop there, and I can see why this movie went straight to video. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it. In fact, I may have liked it a little more than the other, and I’m not sure whether that’s because or despite its being more ridiculous. Like the background music, for example. While in the earlier film the music was relatively understated and well placed, it was almost operatic at times in this one, bordering on soap operatic on more than one occasion.

The cast was decent and familiar. I realized Charles and Peter were two of the siblings from The Hamiltons, but I didn’t hold that against them (though I didn’t buy Charles’s Southern accent for a second). The dialogue was silly at times, but the story relatively interesting. There were certainly points where the characters were doing really dumb things for the sake of the plot, but I wasn’t expecting much.

Overall, it’s pretty watchable. It’s not that gory and definitely not that scary, but it’s okay. Maybe save it for when it’s actually April Fool’s Day, though.