Leprechaun Origins Movie Review – Fuck You, Lucky Charms

Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: August 22, 2014
Rating: R
Director: Zach Lipovsky


Sophie, Ben, David, and Jeni are four good friends and two couples ready for some excitement and adventure in Ireland. After winding up in a fairly small town, they make some new friends and wind up learning about a small cabin on the outskirts of town that is perfect for them. One of their new friends even offers to drive them there and drop them off and pick them up the following morning.


Not long after settling down for the night, they discover that something extremely dark is going on. After hearing noises outside, they find that the men who drove them to the cabin locked them in and that there is no escape. Once the leprechaun himself makes an appearance, we supposedly learn the true story behind our favorite little green guy.


I absolutely love the Leprechaun franchise. My older brother was a legal adult when the first movie came out, and I was just a little kid (maybe eight?) fascinated with the trailers I saw on television. He was nice enough to take me and a friend to see it in theaters and nice enough to torment her the rest of the night while I giggled at anyone finding that movie scary. I own copies of all the movies in the franchise and absolutely devoured Warwick Davis's book. That said, this movie was complete crap and unconnected to the franchise.


Do you want to know what the legend/origin is for the leprechaun? Apparently, there was once a town, the one from this film, where a group of townspeople discovered a pot of gold. They stole the gold, the leprechaun came after them, and rather than return it, they set it up so they could sacrifice people to him.


How does a little village in the middle of Ireland get enough people to visit to appease the leprechaun? I have no clue. The better question might be, why are there so many damn leprechauns? It turns out that there is an entire network of these little buggers running loose. Why don't they all just get together and attack everyone in Ireland? That is yet another unanswered question.


The problem with a movie like Leprechaun Origins is that it should tell some type of origin story. Davis originally announced that he wanted to do another film in the franchise and gave some interviews where he talked about being disappointed when the producers didn't call on him for this one. After seeing it, I can only hope that he's glad they didn't call him.


Leprechaun Origins is supposedly a reboot of the franchise. If this is what they want to do with the series, I hope they stop. I can usually find some type of redeeming factor in even the worst of horror movies, but this one was just boring. There weren't any scenes that left me on the edge of my seat and no scenes that really made me want to remember the film.


The best thing about the Leprechaun series is that Davis knows how to combine humor and horror to make an entertaining film. It looks like the people behind this film forgot about that.