Leprechaun Retrospective: Leprechaun - Origins (2014)

Leprechaun: Origins

2014

Director: Zach Lipovsky

Starring: Dylan "Hornswoggle" Postl, Stephanie Bennett, Andrew Dunbar, Melissa Roxburgh, Brendan Fletcher

Rated: R

What exactly in the f*** was that?

     ~Brandon Peters

I'm really not sure what I sat through.  If it was a Leprechaun movie, it was barely one.  Not that this movie was going to have some sort of high bar to meet based on this series, but man, this group really had no idea what had come before, did they?  WWE Films might be a brand that the untrained eye would scoff at, but I've really enjoyed some of their product (12 Rounds and The Call come to mind quickly).

I say its barely a Leprechaun movie, because it really is.  This feels like any given SyFy Channel Saturday afternoon monster in the woods movie that they just decided to call Leprechaun.  There are some signifiers that graze the surface of Leprechaun, but they're afterthoughts and not really important at all.  The monster is just some sort of gobbly goop that looks hideous and intense and promotes a scary approach.

But that monster, you really don't get to see it.  They've film it in such a way that you'd feel they're embarrassed about it.  There's all these POV "Visions", negative looking shots, quick cuts and just all around not showing the damn thing.  Its pretty frustrating.  Also, it never talks.  The thing they want you to believe is the Leprechaun is incredibly boring in that it just shrieks and growls.  There's no spirit of the original movie left in this "serious" approach.

What it does have over the others is some gruesome deaths.  While they are bloody and more painful than what's come before, they are also pretty forgettable.  There's no Leprechaun one-liners or something wild attached to remember it by.  Its just a series of some blunt and gruesome kills accompanied with growls and shrieks.  Why'd they even go so far as to have Hornswoggle play him and make a big deal about it?  You can't tell him from the costume at any given time and the monster has zero personality.

Aside from just being a generic, boring and uninteresting piece of junk, the biggest offense to this movie is that it really doesn't understand the series at all.  Sure there's some shit about gold and that "Fuck you, Lucky Charms" line gets spouted, but there is nothing here that tells me anyone here had ever seen a Leprechaun movie before.  This series wasn't known or based in dark n' gritty disturbing horrors or beastly scares.  This was a comedy series that featured some splatstick type of humor to go with some extravagant setup.  You can't "make the Leprechaun scary again" when the little guy was never scary to begin with.

One thing true to the spirit of this series is that this was primarily a home video release.  This couldn't even make it to theaters.  A quick glance and you'll see why.  If there happens to be another film following this iteration of the series, count me out.  This one was absolutely horrible.  I could find no reasons to give this one merits or to keep my eyes open.  I compared it to SyFy Channel original movies earlier, and I apologize to those films for that insult.  They're far better and far more enlightened than this.  This was torturous.

NEXT TIME:  The Leprechaun movies...from worst to...decent?