Leprechaun Returns (2018) – Review

What do you do if the villain of your franchise has hit a critical mass level of desperation that lands him in space? In the Friday the 13th movie series, after Jason got his “In Space” entry, the next film teamed him up with a fellow horror icon Freddy Krueger, but when that failed to rejuvenate the franchise, they tried the reboot route in 2009. That didn’t go well either, and thus we are now looking at getting Friday the 13th: The Beginning sometime in the near future. I just can’t wait. But today, we’re not talking about the trials and tribulations of Jason Voorhees. Instead, we will be looking at how the Leprechaun franchise tackled that same law of diminishing returns.

In the Leprechaun series, we saw the titular character fighting space marines in its fourth outing before coming back to Earth to fight “In the Hood,” which led to an attempted reboot back in 2014 and what looked to be the end of the franchise, but then again, you can’t keep a good slasher villain down. With this entry, SyFy Channel took a cue from the latest Halloween movie by making Leprechaun Returns, a direct sequel to the 1993 original while gleefully ignoring all the subsequent sequels. I bet the studio execs celebrated over a five martini lunch after that brilliant idea.

Leprechaun Returns is set 25 years after the original movie took place, where we are introduced to Lila Redding (Taylor Spreitler), the teenage daughter of Tory Redding — who was played by Jennifer Anniston back in the day, but due to budgetary concerns, does not appear in this film — and from Lila we learn that poor Tory had become a crazy recluse, carrying on about monsters and such, until eventually succumbing to cancer.

Question: Is cancer the go-to remedy for removing a character from a franchise? Poor Sarah Connor was revealed to have died from leukemia in Terminator: Rise of the Machines, so is this just lazy or some kind of industry standard?

Now, the producers may not have been able to entice Jennifer Anniston back, but we do get the return of the dimwitted Ozzie Jones (Mark Holton), who if you remember was the one that originally freed the evil little prick in the first place, and who ended up swallowing a piece of the leprechaun’s gold. The Ozzie character fills the role of the “Harbinger,” for this entry and after he is brutally murdered by the returning leprechaun and will become Lila’s guardian spirit guide.

I guess this is better than dying off-screen of cancer.

There really isn’t much of a plot to Leprechaun Returns — not that we were expecting one — but, sadly, we don’t get much in the way of interesting kills or likeable characters either. Taylor Spreitler tries her best as the film’s protagonist, and she has a couple of good moments in the third act, but it all comes too late for me to care, and overall, I considered the entire cast to be nothing but a collection of annoying slasher fodder. The basic set-up to the film is that a group of sorority girls are turning the old Redding homestead into an eco-friendly sorority house, and their renovations somehow awaken the Leprechaun, which then causes him to go on a murder spree as he hunts for his pot-o-gold. Aside from Lila, the sorority members consist of the house’s neurotic leader Rose (Sai Bennett), the perpetual drunk Meredith (Emily Reid), and finally, we have Katie (Pepi Sonuga), who makes some serious errors in judgment when it comes to relationships. And because no self-respecting slasher film can do without some idiot male characters to add to the kill list, we are saddled with rock-stupid Andy (Ben McGregor), who is Katie’s ex-boyfriend, but clearly still on the “Friends With Benefits” list, and then we have Matt (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins) who doesn’t know how to move out of the way of a slowly approaching drone.

“Why are you so sore, audiences love lots of gore.”

The film’s kryptonite is the fact that the Leprechaun (Linden Porco) himself never comes across as even remotely threatening — even with the body count rising, I just couldn’t take him seriously — as the girls constantly punt the little bastard away at every turn. The only way this movie was able to reach its 90-minute run-time was because the little shit can regenerate from any damage he takes, even to the point of forming a little army of miniature leprechauns when he is blown to smithereens.

The leprechaun repeatedly states that without his gold, he is in a weakened state — his telekinetic power not having the oomph it had in the previous film — yet these bozos immediately plan to return the gold to him as soon as possible; how fucking dumb is that? That’s like giving a sun lamp to an evil Superman. Worse is the fact that Leprechaun Returns seems to be nothing more than a collection of random gags and jokes from previous entries, with all the leprechaun’s standard puns and limericks making him come across as low-rent bastard child of Freddy Krueger and the Crypt Keeper.

“Maybe I should go torment Ash Williams for a bit.”

Now, I’m sure many fans of the franchise will get a kick out of this chapter in the cinematic history of the leprechaun, as there is the prerequisite amount of gore and goofy antics, it just didn’t work for me, but even die-hard fans will have to admit that the CGI assisted gore found in this film is very poor and distracting, and the humor was more miss than hit. Leprechaun Returns doesn’t bring anything new to the franchise, the world-building is non-existent, and the slasher fodder was more annoying than entertaining. This film is a clear case of “Been there, done that,” making it all too predictable and even boring at times, and I sincerely hope that this series can be finally put to rest. But, more than likely, we will eventually be getting a leprechaun meets Michael Myers movie.

Or maybe he could get a job as the new mascot for Lucky Charms.