April, April - Tote scherzen nicht

In the débutant ball of the socialite Torrance Caldwell (Scout Taylor-Compton) on April, 1st 2007, the jealous and futile millionaire Desiree Cartier (Taylor Cole) dilutes a powerful drug in the champagne of her dislikable acquaintance Milan Hastings (Sabrina Ann Aldridge) and her reckless brother Blaine Cartier (Josh Henderson) takes sexual advantage of Milan. Desiree tapes the situation with a camcorder while her friends Torrance, Barbie (Jennifer Siebel) and Peter Welling (Samuel Child), Charles Lansford (Joseph McKelheer) and Ryan (Joe Egender) snoop the couple in Blaine's bedroom. However, Milan has a seizure and falls off the balcony immediately dying. The group goes to court, Blaine looses the control of the family's fortune that shifts to Desiree, but they are considered innocents and the death of Milan is considered a fatality in a prank. One year later, each one of them receive a letter mustering them up to Milan's grave. While gathered in the cemetery, they receive a package telling that each one of them would die until the end of the day if the responsible for the death of Milan does not assume the guilty.

The association of "April's Fool Day" with the franchises "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Cruel Intentions" is immediate. The author has certainly inspired in these movies to write his plot, and I noted that this is not only my impression, but there is at least another IMDb User that had the same feeling. However, the unoriginal, unbelievable and predictable story is not totally bad and entertains. The good point of this flick is the camera work, with long travelings and original planes and angles. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Dia da Mentira" ("Day of the Lie" (literally), meaning "April Fool's Day")

The biggest incentive for me personally was seeing familiar scenes from where I have lived for much of my life. No city was ever specified but there are several brief shots of the Charlotte skyline, and the Bank of America Tower spends a lot of time on screen.

The siblings end up in court, in the Union County N.C. courthouse I remember so well from when I was in college, when efforts were being made to save it. Strange that the court case is taking place in such a small building if the setting of the movie is a large city, but it's a nice looking historic building. And it gets a second appearance later.

Charles goes on TV with Susan Moyer. It's an amazingly realistic depiction.

Blaine moves into a hotel. Based on the credits, I will guess that this is The Residence at SouthPark, though I've never seen it.

The cemetery is apparently in Charlotte since we can see the skyline, and the Bank of America Tower remains on screen through most of the scene.

Some of the subsequent incidents are quite violent, but the rest of the movie is pretty exciting, with car chases and fear of what's coming around every corner. I recognized several Charlotte landmarks in at least one car chase. I never saw the new Little Hardware but I remember the fire that destroyed the old one. If you blink you'll miss the stadium of the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

And then comes the amazing ending. Or at least I thought it was. There's more!

And it's still not over. Wait until you see what happens next!

And be sure to stay around for the credits. You don't want to miss that. It's not a critical plot detail but it's one you want to see.

Was this a great horror movie? Probably not, but it's worth seeing. It's somewhat humorous to start with and in the scenes involving the tabloid TV series. But once the movie makes the transition to more scary and exciting, I think it gets the job done.

Not a classic, but something to enjoy.

The film starts with a party where names like Barbie and Blaine are common. I expected to find a Muffin and a Biff. Not the crowd that I have ever associated with. It takes a long time to set up the story. It was 25 minutes into the film before we see the prank that resulted in Milan's (Sabrina Aldridge) tragic death.

Now, it is a year later, and the fun begins.

It was the dog Elsie that dies first. I have never seen such a fake dog in any film.

One by on the party goes did, but the deaths were unremarkable.

Very little blood and no nudity.

I got over my disgust that they were remaking one of my all-time favorite films and went into this one with a completely open mind -- I saw the trailer but I purposely didn't read a single thing about it. It seemed strange that the film skipped cinemas, but now I understand why. I didn't think any film could be this bad.

Strangely, there's a beautiful production design, and most of the actors are good (though the fact that everyone in the cast is model-pretty is a bit disconcerting). Unfortunately, the script is truly abysmal. After 20 minutes of getting to know the characters -- all of whom are wholly unlikable -- the story actually begins, and from that point on it becomes a routine I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER rip-off, sans the suspense, gore and intentional humor of that film. The only thing lifted from the 1986 film is the title, a character with a videocamera (which had nothing to do with the plot itself in the original) and the theatrical twist ending -- though they tried to trump the twist here, which resulted in one of the most predictable and unintentionally hilarious moments in the history of film.

This film feels like one of the clones that followed in the wake of SCREAM. If you've seen a horror movie since 1997, don't bother with this one. But if you're masochistic enough to endure the film, make sure to stay through the closing credits for an extra scene -- after all, there's no other extras anywhere on the disc.

A question if I may, why in the blue hell would a person make a remake a film if they weren't going to stick to the original concept? I mean I understand making tweaks here and there but let's be clear this shares little to nothing with the 1986 original.

Though I deemed the original movie rather overrated I at least appreciated the intricate story that it wove. This 2008 remake throws the originals concept out the window and comes up with something all of it's own, sadly what it's replaced with is generic Hollywood tripe and not even the top shelf tripe.

With an interchangeable forgettable cast playing top 1% spoiled trust fund babies we see a mindless tale about a prank gone wrong and the past coming back to haunt them one year later. So again, this doesn't even resemble the original movie.

The characters are detestable, news flash it's very hard to care about the plights of wretched human beings such as these (And no there isn't a "Nice" one mixed in). For this reason I was entirely unable to give a crap about the fates of these people and considering how dull the plot was I couldn't find it in myself to care about that either.

Did you like the original? If so this won't appeal to you. But do you like slashers? If so then again this won't appeal to you

The Good:

Nope

The Bad:

Vile characters

Hardly a remake

As generic as conceivably possible