April X

Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie stars as street-level criminal Baxter in director Michel K Parandi’s April X. Living with his twin sister April (Lilly Krug), Baxter does whatever jobs he can to help the pair scrape by. His latest gig is acquiring a mechanical heart for powerful crime boss Klein (Serban Pavlu). However, an unforeseen mishap lands Baxter with a tonne of debt that he’s unable to pay back, which leads to someone taking his sister. Five years pass with Baxter believing his twin to be dead, but when his former accomplice (Tourialay Akbari) informs him that someone who looks just like April has been spotted in a brothel, Baxter sets out on a mission to get her back.

Set within a semi-cyberpunk world that borrows various elements from Blade Runner, Akira and Cyberpunk 2077, April X aims to deliver a hard-boiled thriller that tackles themes of identity and memory. Unfortunately, despite Storrie’s best attempts to give a convincing performance, this sci-fi flick is clunky, disjointed and doesn’t have anything interesting to say.

Baxter is the standard genre archetype. He’s a bit of a lone wolf; he cares deeply about those he loves, and he spends most of the film talking in moody voiceovers. Storrie leans into the B-movie elements and brings plenty of conviction to the role. The issue is the dialogue is so unnatural and stilted that every scene comes across as forced and flat. The strangest offender is a spontaneous food fight in a supermarket between the siblings that happens early in the film. Rather than establish an endearing bond between the leads, the whole thing is tonally jarring and awkward to watch.

One of the most interesting and thematically rich parts of the cyberpunk subgenre is the dystopian world. The near-future setting of April X is a place where cloning exists, and people can archive and sell their dreams. The ideas are full of potential but are ultimately left unexplored. Instead of philosophising over whether people are defined by their memories, the plot moves from one uninteresting sequence to another, taking until the halfway point for the main action to get underway.

Events only grow more ridiculous as the feature reaches a hollow and rushed conclusion. While Storrie and Krug salvage what they can, April X is a shallow imitation of superior genre outings.

Andrew Murray

April X is released in select cinemas on 2^nd October 2026.

Watch the trailer for April X here: