Review: Leprechaun Returns – “A fun popcorn horror flick”

Directed by Steven Kostanski
Starring Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, Sai Bennett, Linden Porco, Mark Holton

The original 1993 Leprechaun was a fun piece of horror laced with comedy, very much in the style of this mid-80s to 90s US horror flicks (and it also boasted a pre-Friends mega-fame Jennifer Aniston). Naturally, like many other 80s and 90s horror flicks it spawned a franchise with another six outings over the last couple of decades, and like similar franchises (think what happened with Freddy or Jason) it was often a law of diminishing returns. Leprechaun Returns, made for the SyFy Channel, rather wisely appears to be ignoring the many sequels and instead sees our pint-sized folkloric nasty resurrected some twenty-five years after the original movie, even boasting an appearance from Mark Holton as Ozzie from the original 1993 film (a nice touch).

A group of students have decided to set up an eco-friendly sorority house off-campus in the rural farmhouse from the first film, an off-grid house with solar power and drawing water from, yes, you guessed it, the old well where the Leprechaun was supposedly killed and banished, and has been for the last quarter of a century, everything fine. Lila (Taylor Spreitler) is the daughter of Jennifer Aniston’s character from the first film, moving in with her sorority sisters to fix the old place up. She experiences some premonition-like dreams on the way there, but she puts this down to the stress of recently caring for her terminally ill mother, and continues her college plans and moving into the house with the others, unaware that the little, green, mean, rhyming monster has been awoken from his twenty-five year slumber (in a pretty gruesome but darkly funny “rebirth” scene).

Lila heard her mother’s stories, but understandably never believed her tales of some murderous leprechaun with a gold fixation and a penchant for bloody killings, and her first encounter with the leprechaun (now played by Linden Porco) she is convinced for the first few moments that she is seeing things, it’s all in her head, stress from caring for her mother in her last days mixed with those stories she never believed in, but it doesn’t take long to realise he’s very real. Her sorority sisters and a couple of visiting boyfriends, fairly understandably, think their new friend is crazy, but not for long.

This cracks along at a fair old pace, from the set-up and introducing the new characters we get to the rebirth of the leprechaun himself pretty swiftly, which is good as that’s when the fun begins! Bad rhyming and black humour mixes with some inventive blood-letting as the leprechaun decides some killing – and finding his precious gold, of course – will help to regenerate his powers (he has some ‘performance’ issues with his first attempts after his incarceration).

Okay, you know this isn’t Shakespeare, but so too do the film-makers, and Kostanski delivers a decent mix of dark humour (including some nice touches like the leprechaun taking in the changes since he was last above ground, like mobile phones and selfies, or making fun on an electric car) with the gore and deaths (I won’t spoil them by describing any of them – sure, you can see them coming, but that’s part of the fun in this kind of flick), and ignoring the previous sequels and leading right on from events years before in the original is a good move, as are the nice touches linking the new film to its progenitor. Porco seems to be relishing the role, wicked grin through the grotesque make-up as he delivers blood and bad puns and rhymes, and there’s also a small but welcome sub-theme on gender empowerment.

This is a fun popcorn horror flick, and with Lionsgate releasing this (on April 1st) in a double-pack with the original 1993 film this is a good Friday night double-bill slice of old and new horror – set up the snacks and drinks and sit back and have some fun!