{"id":869317,"date":"2026-10-03T11:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T11:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869317\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T11:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T11:32:12","slug":"april-x-review-connor-storrie-in-a-generic-sci-fi-clone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869317\/","title":{"rendered":"‘April X’ Review: Connor Storrie in a Generic Sci-Fi Clone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt would be nice to say that Connor Storrie<\/a> burns up the screen in \u201cApril X<\/a>,\u201d the star\u2019s first film vehicle released since TV\u2019s \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d made him hot property, but it would be overstating the case. Appropriating Harrison Ford\u2019s \u201cBlade Runner\u201d frown, among a few other things nicked from that sci-fi classic in this sci-fi filler, Storrie capably shoulders a grim, po-faced tale of human cloning and trafficking in a greige dystopian future, but there\u2019s not much for him to work with here \u2014 and he mostly projects the aura of a working actor dutifully waiting for something better to come along. Which it did, so job done. But you can hardly blame \u201cApril X\u201d for riding his sudden celebrity, securing a theatrical release and escaping the straight-to-VOD morass that would appear to be its natural habitat.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurely only Storrie\u2019s most ardently committed new fans will venture out to see this, though: It\u2019s hardly an embarrassing blot on his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, but it\u2019ll be forgotten long before the second-season premiere of the queer hockey phenomenon. For writer-director Michel K. Parandi<\/a>, making his feature-length debut, \u201cApril X\u201d will be a more critical calling card \u2014 and duly shows off some resourceful technical ability on a cramped budget. But his script, co-written with regular collaborator Jack Coulter, is less impressive, welding together story scraps from other, better films to rather turbid, uninvolving effect. It occupies a similar genre space to the recent release \u201cHot Spot,\u201d Agnieszka Smoczynska\u2019s comparably scrappy, patched-together vision of compromised human identity in the middle-distance future; that film was a misfire, but a measure of its imaginative eccentricity would still be welcome here.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe year is unspecified, but the fatigued brutalist housing blocks of outer Bucharest are still standing: Though it doesn\u2019t specify a location either, \u201cApril X\u201d 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. The odd hi-tech drone adds some futuristic pizzazz to the film\u2019s exterior vistas, but the new technologies defining the narrative aren\u2019t of the gleaming, brave-new-world variety: People are being cloned in grubby, shadowed fashion, while memories and dreams can be captured and downloaded onto surprisingly retro-looking data devices.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn this grimy waking nightmare, twins Baxter (Storrie) and April (German actor Lilly Krug) barely eke out a living doing a variety of sketchy jobs, some more criminal than others. 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\u2019s selling of her dreams to others wishing to experience her sensations isn\u2019t a fresh idea \u2014 paging \u201cStrange Days\u201d \u2014 but it\u2019s one of the more fertile ones here, and goes frustratingly unexploited as the film continues to probe a single glum reality. <\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re more concerned with Baxter, whose underworld dealings eventually see him run afoul of local gangster Klein (Serban Pavlu), and the twins\u2019 combined savings aren\u2019t enough to allay the severe consequences. Soon April disappears, and Baxter\u2019s desperate search for her begins. It\u2019s ongoing when the story suddenly lurches five years into the future: The world looks much the same, but his hair is briefly longer, while April has seemingly been cloned into a number of identikit sex workers. Whether her brother can locate her soul in any one of them, or somehow implant it via her recorded memories, is the film\u2019s big existential question \u2014 but the characters themselves aren\u2019t drawn with enough warmth or personality for us to really care either way.<\/p>\n

\n\tStorrie soldiers through it all with a clenched jaw and a steely gaze, but the film\u2019s world never comes fully to life. Nathan Haugaard\u2019s sheeny widescreen lensing and Oana Novicov\u2019s distressed production design ensure it looks pretty good, but \u201cApril X\u201d 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\u2019s life and livelihood are so muddy that he doesn\u2019t have our full attention. Parandi\u2019s film winds up outlining a dystopia more dull than devastating \u2014 though perhaps that\u2019s the future we should really be fearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be nice to say that Connor Storrie burns up the screen in \u201cApril X,\u201d the star\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[366481,162091,88,366482,206],"class_list":["post-869317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-april-x","tag-connor-storrie","tag-entertainment","tag-michel-k-parandi","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}