There are lots of bad movies in the world. Some are entertaining because of how utterly inept they are, some because of the way they wink at the camera, some are just awful, some are disgusting, sickening, disheartening, cynical cash grabs but only one is Leprechaun Origins. It’s the worst, the underbelly of the underbelly of bad movies. It is not only the worst horror remake, reboot, reimaging, whatever nonsense word you want to call it, it is also the worst movie I have ever seen.
Do not mistake my saying this as a form of praise. Oh no. I hesitate to even call it the worst film ever made because that makes it sound like it might be worth seeing. Trust me, it is not. It is incompetent, boring, long, inexplicable, uninspired, stupid and the very definition of cynical. The only way I can reconcile the fact that I spent an hour and half of my life watching it is by taking up the noble cause of warning others. Look at me as a cautionary tale folks; I am worse off for having sat through this…thing. Do not be like me. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of the original films or if you just want to see how truly awful it is. Don’t watch it. Your life is worth more.
Just in case there are a few of you out there with extreme masochistic tendencies, I’m here to dispel them as I go through the many, many reason why Leprechaun Origins is a complete waste of celluloid. Chief among them is this. In fact, this should have been posted as a warning before the credits started:
THIS MOVIE DOES NOT CONTAIN A LEPRECHAUN
Oh sure, it claims there’s a Leprechaun in the movie, even uses the word a few times, but this creature can not be considered, by any definition, a leprechaun. We all know what one of those looks like, don’t we? It’s part of our collective consciousness. So why in gods holy name would the producers of this decide to create a creature that I guess looks sort of like a bald gray gargoyle crossed with a pig? I say ‘I guess’ because the movie does not contain a single clear shot of this ‘leprechaun’. That’s right. We never see it’s full body. There are lots of blurry shots of its face and a few of its hands but that’s it. It wears no hat, no gold buckled shoes, is not green, and does not talk. This is the equivalent of making a movie called The Easter Bunny and having a deformed sewer rat play the title character.
WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING? Didn’t they know that anyone who has the misfortune of sitting through this movie was going to get one look at the creature and shout, ‘NOPE’? I have no answer. But I can safely guess that the reason we never see the creature is because the visual effects team and the director realized it was a horrible design and decided to hide it. It’s like they went to the Ed Wood School of filmmaking. A company called ‘Anthem Visual Effects’ did the effects. I tell you this so you can avoid any future movies with their name on it.
Say what you will about the original Leprechaun movies but one thing cannot be denied: They all contain a Leprechaun. Their titles promise something that they always manage to deliver on. They also contain things like scenes, characters, the barebones of a plot, and shots that are in focus.
SEE THE DIFFERENCE?
The so-called plot of this travesty involves four idiotic back packing teenagers (you can tell cuz they all wear backpacks) who travel to a rural village in Canada…uh, I mean Ireland…to look at some ancient crap. None of them are remotely likeable or interesting. They’re helped out by several ominous looking locals with atrocious Irish accents and wind up at a cabin in the woods where they’re set up as food for the ‘leprechaun’. It’s revealed that the townsfolk stole the monsters’ gold some time ago and now have to appease it by feeding unsuspecting idiots to it every few years or so, I guess. Why the townsfolk don’t just rally together and kill the little fucker is never brought up.
That’s it. That’s the movie. The ‘leprechaun’ shows up, chases the kids out of the cabin, they run through the woods, back to the cabin, the townsfolk trap them again, the ‘leprechaun’ chases them again, they run back through the woods and then back into the townsfolk. Over and over again. For ninety fucking minutes. No plan ever lasts more than five minutes cuz everyone in this movie is an idiot. The kids decide to leave, then they decide to stay, then they decide to grab a car, then they decide to kill the monster, then they decide to run away again. The locals can’t decide what to do either. They lock the kids in a cabin, in a car, in a barn, in an attic but always manage to let them get away. Even the ‘leprechaun’ is incompetent. At one point, all four kids are tied to trees, the ‘leprechaun’ appears, begins to slice them up, and THEY STILL MANAGE TO GET AWAY. Every character in this movie should be fired from life.
THEY’RE HORRIFIED OF THE SCRIPT
There are also no rules. Gold sometimes lures the ‘leprechaun’ and sometimes it doesn’t. The townsfolk say they can’t kill the kids cuz the ‘leprechaun’ has to but then they try to anyway. And is there a special way to kill the beast? A four leaf clover perhaps? Nope, at the end the heroine just chops of its head with a machete that she magically finds lying in the grass. And that’s not a spoiler because, really, what the hell does it spoil? Also, you’re never going to see this film right? RIGHT?!
Trying to make this premise scary was a huge mistake. A horror movie about an evil leprechaun is, at best, a silly idea. The original movies knew that. That’s why I’ve always been something of a fan of them. Yes, even the one in space. They knew what they were and didn’t try to be anything else. This movie seems to actually think the premise could be frightening, which once again should elicit a simple, declarative ‘NOPE’ from the audience. And the director, a hack named Zach Lipovsky, seems to think that scary translates to lots of shaky cam, people running around, and something I’m going to dub ‘Lep Vision’. You see, there are many, many POV shots from the ‘leprechaun’s’ perspective (more than shots of the creature) and the beast apparently has some sort of inverted night vision. Why? I don’t know. I have a feeling the producers asked Mr. Lipovsky that very question and his response was something like, “because scary”.
What’s most depressing about this whole experience is how utterly cynical it is. Halfway through it, I wondered why it’s even called “Leprechaun”? Why not just call it “Gargoyle in the Woods” or something equally generic? The answer is simple: because Leprechaun brings this shit name recognition and moronic fans of the series, like me, felt compelled to at least give it a look. I’ve been conned. Conned into watching the most blatant and obvious of pathetic cash grabs because of the affection I have for the earlier films in the series. I would like a personal apology from everyone who worked on the film. The only person I feel slightly bad for is Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl who plays the ‘leprechaun’. I had no idea who he was before watching but he’s apparently in the WWE. He clearly thought playing the title role would jump start his film career but he is completely unrecognizable in that horrendous make up and never even gets to speak. He got conned, just like me. So I feel a little sympathy. Everyone else involved can get mauled to death by rabid baboons for all I care.
Folks, don’t be like me. Don’t watch this. Do literally anything else. Clip your nails, have a sandwich, do some drugs, rob a bank, stare at the wall, take a nap, watch Leprechaun Back 2 Da Hood, stab yourself in the leg, stick pins in your eyes. Any one of those things is infinitely better than Leprechaun Origins.
P.S. Has any movie with the word ‘origins’ in the title ever been good?
GET CHOMPED