Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
What better way to prepare for the fast-approaching weekend than by indulging in the some of the Internet’s most well-done web content? Take advantage of your lunch break and treat yourself to Afternoon Delight, Decider’s carefully curated picks of the best short-form content available on the world wide web. This week we’re spotlighting Fool’s Day, a completely bonkers short film from Cody Blue Snider.
BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER, please watch the film. Set aside 19 minutes and go for it. It’s so much better if you know absolutely nothing about it going in. Okay, done watching? Read on.
While the film was released in 2013, its recent recirculation due to Short of the Week luckily placed it on our radar, and we couldn’t be happier about it. Consider this a belated celebration of the world’s worst holiday: April Fool’s Day. The premise is fairly simple; a class of fourth graders gleefully prepare to pull a prank on their teacher, who tells a fellow teacher outside the classroom that she’s got her own prank planned. One of the students coerces the rest of the class into spiking their teacher’s coffee with a handful of disgusting materials, ranging from soda, shaving cream, and mysterious pills to bubbles, grass, rock candy, and laxatives. One girl, Jamie, refuses to take part, and brings a whoopee cushion to put on her teacher’s chair as her own little trick. The rest of the class ignores her and proceeds to dump the foul mixture into the coffee machine, and when the bell rings and the teacher enters with her peace-fingers raised to silence the troops, the kids excitedly look on, waiting for the result of her gnarly coffee consumption.
The teacher pulls a pretty lame prank (she lies that there’s no recess today) and finds the whoopee cushion quickly, chortling at the effort. She reminds the class that Officer O’Donnell is coming in for his weekly D.A.R.E. lesson at 9AM, and says she bets they could get the officer to sit on the whoopee cushion, to the kids’ delight. After she tries the coffee – and enjoys it, wondering if there’s gingerbread or something in it – her head explodes. Yep. I would be remiss not to admit that I literally jumped at my desk and said “OH MY GOD!” aloud when this happened. The set-up is so perfectly innocent and mundane that this completely unexpected incident is enough to blow your own mind. What follows – the children frantically running around, their faces covered in blood, trying to figure out what to do before Officer O’Donnell arrives – is enough to induce belly laughter. The levels of absurdity – tying up poor little honest Jamie in the bathroom, the kid who knows his Miranda rights (and attempts to cut off the teacher’s fingers with safety scissors a la SVU), the cop who can’t high-five or properly teach kids about drugs, burying the teacher in the sandbox, among other completely crazy moments – will leave you with stunned laughter. The combination of kids + dark comedy + garish gore is a total treat; seeing this flick with an audience would surely make it even better.
It’s worth noting that performances by child actors in short films are usually fairly cringe-worthy, but these kids are funny. They’re absolutely uproarious. Where did these children learn such brilliant comedic timing? Where did you find these kids?! The visual comedy and masterful tone present throughout the film in combination with its glorious performances and music choices is delectable. We do not deserve Fool’s Day, but it’s here, and we are so thankful it exists. So relish in this blissful, horror comedy gold. I wish I could unsee it just to experience 2:31 for the first time again.
Follow Snider on Twitter and check out his website for more masterful, (forgive the joke) mind-blowing content.
