Review of April Fool's Day (1986) by Harry W — 27 Apr 2014

Said to be a generic slasher film that featured a memorable twist ending, April Fool's Day sounded like a film that wasn't too bad.

Facing the same basic and generic roots of essentially all other slasher films, the appeal in April Fool's Day is very limited. While fans of the series may rejoice at it for not being as pathetically crafted as many others, overall it still isn't great entertainment.

The repetitive nature of April Fool's Day as a slasher film is the breaking point for it. It follows a basic and routine slasher film plot which has been told many times before while it plays around with the audiences as they attempt to dictate who the killer is. The realistaion at the end damages the entire experience, and up until then it is a fairly routine effort. I will admit though that April Fool's Day did have some decent elements to it.

For one thing the scenery in the film was appealing because it is shot on some fairly nice locations which capture a sense of isolation, although the film never uses excessively dark lighting in a desperate attempt to enhance its atmosphere and instead allows it to unfold naturally. The viewer may or may not feel it depending on their stance on the genre, but I guess it was ok, and the cinematography captured everything fairly nicely without getting shaky or rough. And April Fool's Day does manage to rack up a lot of killing with sufficient blood and gore for most of the time over the course of its 89 minute running time. So from a visual perspective, April Fool's Day isn't too bad. Its superior qualities are definitely in its visual style, so it seems to be the one thing that director Fred Walton got right in making April Fool's Day.

Although, the pace of everything is fairly slow and there isn't really enough deaths or clever plot dynamics to justify that. There is really nothing that April Fool's Day can do to transcend being a generic slasher film except give itself a ridiculous twist ending, and so that is exactly what happens with it. But unlike the twist endings in slasher films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th or even Sleepaway Camp, April Fool's Day has an ending which is too ridiculous for its own good.

The thing that needs to be mentioned in April Fool's Day is its twist ending. So spoiler alert, this is where I'm going to discuss it. As a means of separating itself from all other basic slasher films, April Fool's Day implements in a twist ending where the story reveals everything to have been a lie. All the murders have actually been acted out as an April fool's day joke in preparation for turning the location of the story into a resort which offers a weekend of stage horror. The lack of sensibility in that is what makes it a standout film and reveals the endeavour of all the stupidity in the plot. Up until then, April Fool's Day was a basic slasher film. After that, it is nothing more than a joke. Usually in a slasher film, audiences expect to get some kind of gruesome ending or clever discovery of who the killer is. In April Fool's Day, the story just ends very abruptly midway through what could have been a decent slasher movie climax and instead resulted in being just a stupid black comedy. And the ending is just so stupid and so unbelievable that it gives a bad name to the entire movie. Danilo Bach thought what he was doing was clever when he wrote the story, but it is audiences who have to suffer because of it. Everything collapses in the end due to the ridiculousness of the ending, the fact that it is completely illogical and finally the fact that it does not fit into the slasher film context and therefore attempts to reinvent the film as a black comedy. If you wanted to make a slasher film that was a black comedy, you play on the humourous elements of the characters and their deaths in an original way. You don't write in some crappy M. Night Shyamalan ending and expect everyone to have a laugh and consider it original. That isn't something that Danilo Bach could realise, but it isn't difficult for audiences to do it and it wont be difficult for them to find April Fool's Day to be a severe disappointment because of that. That man was actually nominated for an Academy Award two years prior for penning the screenplay to Beverly Hills cop alongside Daniel Petrie Jr., but it can only be presumed that most of the work was done by him instead of Danilo Bach because anyone who thinks that April Fool's Day has a plot that is clever and funny cannot be trusted to write comedy, especially comedy that is as critically acclaimed as Beverly Hills Cop.

The only other slight redeeming feature that April Fool's Day boasts is its cast. While it certainly doesn't have any of them projected sufficient nudity for a film which is of the slasher genre, by the standards of the genre the acting isn't too bad. While the cast themselves aren't fully memorable, they give decent efforts led by the effective performance of Deborah Foreman. Managing to succeed in playing two characters who have different natures to them, Deborah Foreman successfully tricks audiences into believing that both Muffy and Buffy are two different characters. And while the realisation that this was all a lie is likely to frustrate audiences, Deborah Foreman successful manages to trick viewers into believing the lie in the story so she deserves praise for her efforts in the role.

So despite having some visual appeal and being fairly well acted, April Fool's Day collapses under its routine story and the fact that the twist ending is one of the dumbest I have ever seen, falling into an M. Night Shyamalan style of story writing.