Leprechaun: Origins

This is hands down the worst Leprechaun movie, and it's also one of the worst remakes. That's a twofer, right there. As much as we all loved the Leprechaun series and horror remakes, that's saying something. Do yourself a service and watch something else—watch the 1998 Psycho remake. At least that one borrowed from the source material.

It doesn't feel at all like a Leprechaun movie. I don't know anything about wrestling, but when I heard that someone else was going to don the role of the title character, a role that Warwick Davis made infamous, I figured they were just going to redesign the character and feed him all of Davis's lines. Maybe they'd even throw in a few rhymes here and there.

Well, there was absolutely no reason why they needed a wrestling star to play this character, because the Leprechaun in this movie isn't a character. He's a monster. Yeah, he's a guy in a rubber suit, hopping around like Gollum from Lord of the Rings and growling like some disturbed beast. He has no dialogue, and he doesn't even resemble what a leprechaun is supposed to look like. He looks like kind of a decrepit Pumpkinhead.

They must have known early on that it was a terrible choice, because whenever you see the creature, he's all blurry. What, did they just smear Vaseline over the camera lens? And they don't do this just for certain scenes—it's every time they show us the monster. He has a fair amount of screen time, but they rob us of every potential scary moment because you can never see the damn thing. It also doesn't help that most of the time, they do these weird POV shots, and apparently the Leprechaun possesses infrared sight, like the Predator.

That brings me to my second point: the editing and all the shaky cam. I honestly had no idea what was going on during the whole movie. The monster just pops out of nowhere, tries to eat the main characters, and then—I don't know, it's all over the place. Rinse and repeat. The characters run back and forth into this one cabin in the woods, never accomplishing anything. Every time they go back, someone else dies. It's a terrible paint-by-the-numbers set-up, and again, because they feel the need to make the picture blurry whenever the monster shows up, we can never tell what's going on.

It doesn't matter anyway, because I just didn't give two farts about the characters. That's very common in modern slasher movies. Since when did they make this rule that characters don't need personality in horror movies? Is it really that hard to give characters some personality traits? I know you spend a little more money on ink, but come on? Slashers used to be fun. But here, I cared even less about the protagonists. They just didn't have anything interesting to say. I couldn't even hate any of the characters. Lately, it seems to be a fad with horror movies—there has to be at least one blatant dickhead for the audience to hate. But here, everyone's just kind of there, enjoying the scenery until the Leprechaun arrives. There's no reason to cheer for anyone, there's no reason to hate anyone. It's the most severe case of bland I can think of, and I sat through eleven Puppet Master movies—I know what I'm talking about.

The only connection this movie has at all with any of the earlier films is that the surviving character at the end actually says, "Fuck you, Lucky Charms." I was actually surprised to hear it, because after watching this lifeless piece of crap, I was beginning to wonder if the filmmakers just didn't bother with watching any of the prior movies. Not that they would have a lot to look forward to, but that's beside the point.

I think it's obvious, I hated this movie. And to add insult to injury, they gave us twelve minutes of credits. Twelve. Frickin'. Minutes. The actual move is only an hour 18 minutes. Pay no attention to the 90 minute runtime. The last twelve minutes are purely credits. And no, there weren't a lot of people who worked on it…they just felt the need to give us boring glimpses of movie stills in between showing us the names of people who would go on to become raging alcoholics after making this movie.

This was a total waste of time, an abomination of movie-making proportions, and it needs to be outlawed in at least thirty countries, including this one. I think I found a contender for worst movie sequel of all time. Leprechaun: Origins has the potential to give me cancer. Steer clear, because there's no cure. The only remedy is to just forget it ever happened.

Eleven years since the last Leprechaun film, Lionsgate and WWE Studios bring us a useless re-imaging of the cult classic Leprechaun horror villain from the early nineteen nineties. The original franchise lasted for ten years and had six films, one even involving the Leprechaun in Space. This re-imaging has nothing on the original film. The original film was different for its genre at the time, while this film simply tries to be the same as the other genre films. This is my review of Leprechaun: Origins.

Harris Wilkinson wrote this below average(even for the genre) script. Wilkinson is an unknown with no credits before this sad attempt. The horror genre, and especially the slasher genre like the Leprechaun films, aren't known for great scripts but, do generally lay out some interesting ideas. This film brings us nothing but a quick money grab from from Lionsgate and WWE Studios. The classic character we are use to is gone from this film, and instead we are left with a garbage attempt at changing the story around. Changing characters for the better is one thing but, what they did in this film was simply useless and unneeded. There is even a fairly massive plot hole towards the end of the movie. If you can pay attention towards of the beginning of the film, then you should remember it when it pops up towards the end. It really makes you question how someone like Harris Wilkinson even got this job. Overall, Harris Wilkinson wrote a pretty bad story for this film, even by horror genre standards his story was bad. Big fat thumps down.

The film was directed by Zach Lipovsky and he is mostly known for some very small television films and even visual effects supervisor on some smaller films as well. Lipovsky was handed a bad card of the bad script, and he ran with it sadly. Having clearly not changed anything for the better, Lipovsky deserves as much blame for this awful story as Wilkinson. His directing isn't actually that bad. Some of the shots are nice, and I really enjoyed how he didn't go for the CG kills with fake CG blood and whatnot. None of the deaths are over the top with useless amounts of added blood, which I do enjoy. There was even no nudity in this film, which is different for this type of film. So, Lipovsky doesn't get completely canned by me. The acting is about what you would expect, and it even features two alumni of the genre Garry Chalk(Hamish, appeared in Freddy vs Jason) and Brendan Fletcher(David, also appeared in Freddy vs Jason). If you are expecting much in the way of a good acting performance, then you will be disappointed rather easily. For fans of this genre, you will know that this is just another generic acting performance all around. Lipovsky gets some high regard from me in a few areas but, his overlooking of this awful story can not be looked over. He gets a middle of the road grade from me overall.

Jeff Tymoschuk is the composer for this film and in the past he has scored some video games and some smaller films. I actually enjoyed what Tymoschuck does in this film with the score. The horror genre is known for many classic pieces of music over the decades, and while you shouldn't expect that here in this film, expect a nice effort from start to finish that adds some nice depth to an otherwise lacking film.

In closing, this film is simply meant to get the franchise rolling again and make a lot of quick cash. Hardcore fans of the franchise like myself will finish watching this movie and really dislike what Lionsgate and WWE Studios has done, and even consider it the worst of all the films(yes, even worst than Leprechaun in Space). Those on the fence or just new to the franchise well, please do not let this be the first Leprechaun film you watch. The original horror film brought so much more to the table, while this brings mostly nothing worth of value.

3/10

I thought long and hard about adding this review... After all, I'd be adding nothing that others had not already said: no mythology, no fun, no seeing the creature, poor script, etc. I mean, it says "A horror icon is reborn", and even the title is misleading, "Leprechaun: Origins". With a name like that, you'd think it was a prequel...but nope, all you really get it a movie that feels like it began as a spec script and was slightly tweaked to try and fit the Leprechaun series...which it doesn't. What baffles me is that this is as far from a Leprechaun movie as you can get. No one really expected these movies to be scary, and a large part of their charm was the goofy nature of the films. That's what we wanted to see: a wisecracking midget that would just as soon kill you, and make fun while he did it.

So why am I writing this? My hope, dim as it may be, is that those in charge would read these reviews and think twice before "tweaking" something that didn't need it. There's obviously a desire from people to see these types of films, and there's nothing wrong with that. By changing the nature of the character from wisecracking villain to grunting animal you kill what made it fun in the first place. I honestly haven't been as confused or let down by a movie in a long time.

So there it is, my plea, sent to the Interwebs to anyone that can help.

They took the name "Leprechaun" only so they can sell this, cause believe me, it has almost nothing to do with it. Maybe the mythological beast, but, except the gold thing, which also was very, very bad treated, this movie was down right bad!

So lets see: the acting was OK, I approve to the characters, the Leprechaun had a terrible design, way too look alike "Creep" or "Underground", the habits of the creature were NOT explored properly, and the plot is extremely poor. I will not recommend this one as a "Leprechaun" movie, but as a stand alone, it will go hand in hand with "Animal" (2014) per example, something to pass 90 minutes. Again tho, I am seriously disappointed, I will grade it 4, cause it doesn't even deserve a 5, an above good horror. "Leprechaun: Origins" is not what it seems, what you'd expect or desire, has almost to nothing to do with what you once saw. Look at "Evil Dead", well the remake still had some connections to the first, went the darker path, to which I approve, but maintained some bounds. This one on the other hands, goes solo from start to finish and fails miserably.

"Leprechaun: Origins" or how to waste money and a serious potential. You have been warned, probably quite sure you will still desire to see it, just as I did, but after doing so, please warn people. It almost ruins the first series to be honest. Amazing how bad it is.

Cheers!

I gave this movie 3 out of 10 stars and that was being generous. It was entertaining enough to get through the whole thing and some cute chicks, but that's not saying much. It was sooooo generic. The typical cabin in the woods style film with nothing special added to it.

I thought the film sounded bad from the very beginning and after I watched this, it just proved my point. Why did they have to change the formula from the Warwick Davis series? They had a fan following and this movie just has fans dumping on it while not gaining any new fans.

There was nothing fun about the monster. He didn't talk, didn't look like a tradition Leprechaun. More like one of those creatures from the movie "The Descent". I don't understand how Hollywood needs to remake everything and give everything more of a "realistic" approach. All these original horror series such as Leprechaun, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween used to be a lot more fun then what they are now.

All I have to say is booooooo. Two thumbs down. BRING BACK WARWICK DAVIS!!! Make that long talked about Leprechaun:In the Old West. I love all those movies for as cheesy as they are. They were fun.