Leprechaun: Origins (Film Review)

2014 Lionsgate
Directed by: Zach Lipovsky; Written by: Harris Wilkinson
Starring: Stephanie Bennett, Dylan "Hornswoggle" Postl, Melissa Roxburgh, Garry Chalk, and Brendan Fletcher
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 90 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 3/10

Sophie, her boyfriend, Ben, her friend, Jeni, and Jeni's boyfriend, David, roam the Irish countryside on their college break. Sophie is doing some kind of research involving the area, and leaps at the chance to volunteer the group for a stay at an old abandoned village, far out in the Irish wilderness. They get there, Ben sulks, Jeni is horny, and David gets drunk. Little does this quartet know they've been led out to die. The local Irish folks once angered the local, grotesque Leprechaun, and now the villagers keep the grotesque monster at bay by offering it dumb tourists. But this time, the Leprechaun picked on the wrong four dumb college students...offered up by locals whose accents sound strangely Canadian...in a bushy wooded area that looks strangely like Vancouver.
2014's Leprechaun: Origins is bad. Previous Leprechaun films lived for campy comedic horror, leaning heavily into comedic camp and less on the horror. It's tough to do much else when your villain is a wise-cracking, two-foot tall goldmonger, who sometimes doubles as a pimp. Origins didn't get the memo. It thinks it should dump the humor and amp up the horror. The Leprechaun isn't wisecracking anymore. In fact, it doesn't even talk at all. Now, he's just a moderately strong, moderately stealthy, two-foot monster who looks like he fell down every branch of the ugly tree. The setting never once feels like Ireland (because it's Canada). The countrysiders never once feel Irish (because they're Canadians). So does anything work here?
Eh...not much. As the final girl, Stephanie Bennett is actually not bad. She's more than just a pretty face, though she is quite pretty, and mostly doesn't embarrass herself in a role that could be pretty embarrassing. Melissa Roxburgh eventually became a better actress than she is here. Though her acting is poor, Roxburgh seems to at least grasp that she's meant to be the dumb, pretty blond here, and she remains likable, no matter how dumb she is, or how poorly she delivers her lines. I don't remember the guys and I just watched this. They just don't register. I'm including the Leprechaun here, who is played by a professional wrestler, the absolutely only interesting thing about him, and not a factor that is once exploited in these 90 minutes of attempted film.

I wish Leprechaun: Origins hadn't dropped everything that makes a Leprechaun film, for a tone in which it can't even pretend competency. I wish Bennett and Roxburgh could have been in a fun and silly Leprechaun film. I feel like they would have nailed it! 

Oh well...this movie...doesn't get the gold. It falls...

short.