The Death of April

After disappearing one day, a woman's friends and relatives recount her experiences of her after moving across the country for a new job beforehand and using a series of video diaries to enhance the experience of her slow descent into madness discovering the truth about the whole affair.

Generally, this was a pretty solid mockumentary with a lot to like about it. The idea of this one following along with the typical format where the first half gives us an introduction to her through her friends and family as well as the first video diaries that tell of nothing but exuberance and enthusiasm for the experience sets this off on a nice note. There's a great idea of the normality of her life trying to live on her own through the videos while the talking head interviews offer a similar pattern with the early experiences being discussed being fun and friendly while they slowly and gradually get darker as the videos chronicling her parallel this experience. This leads to the rather fun supernatural antics that are brought up as a means of signaling her subsequent descent into madness. The first stages with the video evidence and investigation into the previous resident come off quite nicely with the early setup beforehand which makes this all rather freaky. Once it gets deeper into the mystery and it becomes far more psychologically damaging as the bizarre encounters and unexplained scenarios keep happening, there's a lot to like with the series of reveals that come about here during the freakouts and snapping going on with those around her that explains the behavioral issues here which gives this a lot to like. There are some drawbacks to be had with the film. The main detriment to the film is the incredibly bizarre hot shotting it does to introduce the supernatural into the film as it seems to get introduced out of nowhere. With the first instances of something going wrong simply being her failure to respond to friends, the sudden introduction of the murder at the apartment and the investigation into the paranormal appear so soon afterward with little build-up or genuine motivation to investigate at this stage of the film feels quite undeserved. There's also the decided lack of urgency towards the glacial plot as this one plays out in a lethargic manner and could've gone much faster which are the issues with this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Language and Violence.

Even though this movie is a low-budget found-footage style film, I really hoped there would be a redeemable bit to it. Sadly there was not. The acting is passable I suppose and the story is OK. It starts slow and ends almost as slowly as it began. No shocks or scares and not even an ounce of suspense in the whole movie. I believe there can still be life found in this genre and that has been evident in films such as "Afflicted" and "The Borderlands." Having a large budget does not equal a better horror film. A good story and gripping atmosphere can lift a possible mediocre movie into the area of one of the best found-footage horror films. It's a small group because most of them are garbage.

When I sat down to watch the 2022 movie "The Death of April", from writer and director Ruben Rodriguez, I believed I was in for a horror movie. Had I known that it was nothing more than a documentary intermixed with poor quality videos of a woman filming her own life by webcam, I would have given this movie a wide berth.

Writer and director Ruben Rodriguez put together an absolute stinker of a script and storyline, and not even 30 minutes into the ordeal I had lost all interest in the storyline. I have to say that watching people sit around doing fake interviews for a movie and watching crappy quality webcam video just doesn't count as being a proper movie for me, nor does it count as being entertaining.

I wasn't familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list, but I can't claim to be impressed with what I was witnessed on the screen, because the actresses and actors had a snowballs chance in Hell to deliver anything worthwhile, given the inadequate script and storyline that they had to work with. Not to mention the God awful character gallery.

Visually, then you're not in for anything grand. Well, not unless you consider low quality and grainy webcam footage as being enjoyable.

Do yourself a favor and don't waste 85 minutes of your life on watching this dumpster fire of a movie.

My rating of writer and director Ruben Rodriguez's 2022 laughable attempt at a horror movie lands on a one out of ten stars.

This is basically if Paranormal Activity, a movie that already had zero budget, had it's budget completely slashed and made about 15 years too late.

Megan is a little interesting, but aside from that the movie is just really dull. Just imagine Paranormal Activity but even less happens. The twist is this is made to look like a documentary, but this has already been done to death and done better. If this were made 10-15 years ago I might say watch it, but the paranormal activity movies have been done to death and the found footage documentaries have been done to death now.

There's just not really much of a reason to watch this movie.

I'm not going to lie I went in not expecting much and that's exactly what I got. Not complete disappointment, there was some creepy scenes but mostly it was just watching some preppy rich girl waste everything her daddy gave her for drinking and boys. The whole ghost thing was layered so thinly on top it just didn't feel like the two were a coherent story. The ending was only more frustrating as it was so abruptly executed and that was it. If you want something tame then here you go. But honestly it was a pretty plain forgettable flick I wouldn't bother watching twice. Sucks cause the movie poster looked epic. Btw....next time don't get your actor for a mom character from a porno flick....