Leprechaun: Origins

The college students and friend Sophie (Stephanie Bennett), Ben (Andrew Dunbar), Jeni (Melissa Roxburgh ) and David (Brendan Fletcher) are spending vacation traveling through Ireland. They stop in a bar in a small village in the countryside and are convinced to visit a remote area by the local Hamish (Garry Chalk) and his son Sean (Teach Grant) drives the group to the spot. The two couples spend the night in an old cabin and soon they discover that Hamish has locked them inside. Further, a Leprechaun (Dylan 'Hornswoggle' Postl) is hunting them down to feed.

"Leprechaun: Origins" is a terrible movie with an awful story. It follows the old formulaic plot of slash movies with a group of youngsters reaching a remote area and taking stupid decisions and attacked by a creature that kills one by one. The worst is that the invincible monster is easily defeated by a clumsy young woman. The writer Harris Wilkinson challenges the viewers' intelligence with this story. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "O Duende: As Origens" ("The Leprechaun: The Origins")

VERY disappointing. I'm a very HUGE Leprechaun fan. I love the Warwick movies. I was excited for it to be scary again. It wasn't, in fact the older ones are scarier.

The Leprechaun doesn't speak, just makes animal sounds and growls. You NEVER see a full shot of the Leprechaun. Its not even shown a lot. I don't see why they even needed an actor for the Leprechaun? If you told me it was CGI and a fake puppet.. I would believe it. Hornswoggle had really no acting opportunity here. Who ever was in charge of creating a leprechaun did a LAZY BORING UNCREATIVE job. Its like the Descent meets vampire. I'd rather have a talking, rhyming Leprechaun then one who just growls.

I expected more. It seems like SYFY put this together. Just make Leprechaun 7 with Warwick! This should have been a stand alone killer Leprechaun film by WWE. It should have never been in the remake category.

Only one kill was really fun and shocking, I jumped. I give it a 4 on IMDb - C level grade wise.

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!

You cant take a poor version of Descent-like creature n call it a Leprechaun. Wher is the hat, clothes, shining boots n above all the rhyming jokes? N what's the obsession with the irritating roars/growls? The film starts with the same ol stuff, a couple running away from something which makes irritating noise. The camera work is tedious n we dont get to c anything. Cut the scene n we get to c highly educated tourists who r lured into the deeper woods by a local, claiming to show em some historical stuff. Ther is some tension n gory stuff but the shaky cam stuff combined with the nite scenes n unnecessary loud noises as if some lame lion roaring, makes it an awful experience. This film ain't worthy of being called the origins of Leprechaun. One scene is a bit reminiscent of Anthropophagus aka Grim Reaper n Cottage. We have one axe n another decapitation scene but still a lousy film.

The original Leprechaun's cinematography was top notch. It was set in the dry sunlight settings n even the nite scenes were well shot but in this case the scenes r short in the dark n the pov of the creature n its noise is very very irritating. In fact the scene before the end credit with the growl sound is unendurable. O boy, the end credit lasts for twelve mins with the cam jus lingering on farm tools n then zap, once again the horrible growl. The first three parts of Leprechaun were awesome cos of the humor.

Ther was an ol fugazi leprechaun, whose balls were made of fine brass. So in stormy weather they'd clang together n sparks wud fly out of his ass.

Try as they will , try as they might, who cheats me with a fugazi Leprechaun won't live thru the nite.

Diddley diddley dee I'm a fake leprechaun me.

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