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Leprechaun: Origins
(Zach Lipovsky, 2014)
Leprechaun: Origins is so terrible that I feel the urge to retroactively boost my rating for every previous movie in the franchise. There's nothing wrong with rebooting the series with a darker, more traditional approach, but the filmmakers have completely sapped their product of personality by shunning the so-bad-it's-good campiness of the earlier films in favor of one of the most unoriginal creature-features I've ever seen.
Replacing Warwick Davis is Vince McMahon's illegitimate son, WWE Superstar Hornswoggle, who receives top billing despite being indistinguishable underneath a mountain of latex and rubber. This rebooted version of the leprechaun is mute and often out of focus, so for all we know the former Cruiserweight Champion spent the entire movie hiding underneath a wrestling ring while someone else of diminutive stature ran around fake Ireland pretending to be a cave-dweller from The Descent. Besides a lust for gold, this monster shares zero similarities with the Warwick Davis iterations, nor does it resemble an actual f**king leprechaun. Generic Creature: Blatant Cash Grab of an Established Franchise would've been a more apt title.
The other Leprechaun movies might've been poorly made, but at least they possessed a modicum of charm and creativity. Origins is built entirely of tropes and clichés. There's not a single moment in this film that doesn't feel recycled from a thousand slashers and creature-features to come before it, making every story beat boringly predictable, every character wearisomely familiar. The closest we get to an "origin" is a lazily placed mythology book that the characters read for a quick exposition dump. Cinematography is ugly and washed out. Camera work is shoddy and frenetic, as it attempts to hide the production's cheapness. A major character randomly disappears without explanation. Acting is adequate, which is probably the closest thing to praise I can give this abomination. If not for the explicit gore, I would've mistaken this for a SyFy made-for-TV production. (Fittingly, that's the exact route that the series would subsequently take.) Leprechaun: Origins is an insult to audiences, an insult to horror, an insult to leprechauns. It is the personification of lazy, unoriginal filmmaking.
Best Kill: Spinal Rip
Leprechaun: Origins
(Zach Lipovsky, 2014)
Leprechaun: Origins is so terrible that I feel the urge to retroactively boost my rating for every previous movie in the franchise. There's nothing wrong with rebooting the series with a darker, more traditional approach, but the filmmakers have completely sapped their product of personality by shunning the so-bad-it's-good campiness of the earlier films in favor of one of the most unoriginal creature-features I've ever seen.
Replacing Warwick Davis is Vince McMahon's illegitimate son, WWE Superstar Hornswoggle, who receives top billing despite being indistinguishable underneath a mountain of latex and rubber. This rebooted version of the leprechaun is mute and often out of focus, so for all we know the former Cruiserweight Champion spent the entire movie hiding underneath a wrestling ring while someone else of diminutive stature ran around fake Ireland pretending to be a cave-dweller from The Descent. Besides a lust for gold, this monster shares zero similarities with the Warwick Davis iterations, nor does it resemble an actual f**king leprechaun. Generic Creature: Blatant Cash Grab of an Established Franchise would've been a more apt title.
The other Leprechaun movies might've been poorly made, but at least they possessed a modicum of charm and creativity. Origins is built entirely of tropes and clichés. There's not a single moment in this film that doesn't feel recycled from a thousand slashers and creature-features to come before it, making every story beat boringly predictable, every character wearisomely familiar. The closest we get to an "origin" is a lazily placed mythology book that the characters read for a quick exposition dump. Cinematography is ugly and washed out. Camera work is shoddy and frenetic, as it attempts to hide the production's cheapness. A major character randomly disappears without explanation. Acting is adequate, which is probably the closest thing to praise I can give this abomination. If not for the explicit gore, I would've mistaken this for a SyFy made-for-TV production. (Fittingly, that's the exact route that the series would subsequently take.) Leprechaun: Origins is an insult to audiences, an insult to horror, an insult to leprechauns. It is the personification of lazy, unoriginal filmmaking.
Best Kill: Spinal Rip