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Connor Storrie's 'April X' Struggles to Engage Despite Technical Merit
Developing
In Short: Connor Storrie's latest film, 'April X,' directed by Michel K. Parandi, is a sci-fi thriller that fails to captivate audiences despite its technical merits.
Connor Storrie's latest film, 'April X,' directed by Michel K. Parandi, is a sci-fi thriller that fails to captivate audiences despite its technical merits.
The film, shot on location in Bucharest, Romania, follows twins Baxter and April, played by Storrie and German actor Lilly Krug, who struggle to make ends meet through various illicit means.
April has a unique ability to sell her vivid dreams to others, a concept that, while intriguing, is underexploited in the narrative.
Variety notes that 'April X' will likely be forgotten long before the second-season premiere of the queer hockey phenomenon, suggesting it may not resonate with audiences.
Background
April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Its length is 30 days.
April X is a 2025 science fiction thriller film directed by Michel K. Parandi and written by Parandi and Jack Coulton.
What's still developing
- Parandi, making his feature-length debut, “April X” will be a more critical calling card — and duly shows off some resourceful technical ability on a cramped budget.
- Soon April disappears, and Baxter’s desperate search for her begins.
- Nathan Haugaard’s sheeny widescreen lensing and Oana Novicov’s distressed production design ensure it looks pretty good, but “April X” is missing the granular particulars and textures that might make us believe it: The narrative, likewise, is just cohesive enough, but the details of Baxter’s life and livelihood are so muddy that he doesn’t have our full attention.
- Surely only Storrie’s most ardently committed new fans will venture out to see this, though: It’s hardly an embarrassing blot on his résumé, but it’ll be forgotten long before the second-season premiere of the queer hockey phenomenon.
- Popular on Variety The year is unspecified, but the fatigued brutalist housing blocks of outer Bucharest are still standing: Though it doesn’t specify a location either, “April X” uses the present-day wear and tear of the Romanian capital, where the film was shot on location, as shorthand for a world collapsing into concrete ruin.
- He traffics organs on the black market, while she has a special gift for dreaming: At a time, apparently, when nobody has slumber visions anymore, hers are enviably lucid and vivid, to a marketable degree.
- April’s selling of her dreams to others wishing to experience her sensations isn’t a fresh idea — paging “Strange Days” — but it’s one of the more fertile ones here, and goes frustratingly unexploited as the film continues to probe a single glum reality.