LEPRECHAUN RETURNS (2018)

Studio:      Lionsgate/Syfy
Director:    Steven Kostanski
Writer:      Suzanne Keilly
Producer:  Adam Friedlander, Darren Cameron
Stars:     Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, Sai Bennett, Emily Reid, Ben McGregor, Oliver Llewellyn-Jenkins, Mark Holton, Linden Porco

Review Score:

---

Summary:

25 years after his first defeat, the leprechaun returns when an environmentally conscious sorority disturbs his watery tomb.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

New Larimore University student Lila Jenkins arrives by bus in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. Lila accepts a ride from local handyman Ozzie Jones to a remote off-campus house that she plans to turn into a green living residence with her environmentally conscious Alpha Upsilon sorority sisters. On the drive, Ozzie learns that Lila is the daughter of Tory Reding, with whom he battled Lubdan the leprechaun 25 years earlier.

After Ozzie drops her off with a cryptic warning, Lila meets her sorority sisters Katie and Rose. The girls discuss renovation projects that include installing solar panels and fixing the disused well, where Lubdan remains secretly imprisoned, for water. Fourth sister Meredith arrives with Katie’s ex-boyfriend Andy and Andy’s aspiring filmmaker friend Matt.

Ozzie returns to the property to look for the cellphone he dropped earlier. While investigating sounds from the well, water sprays upward that Ozzie inadvertently swallows.

Ozzie drives away in a panic. Ozzie stops in a forest and gurgles up the four-leaf clover used to originally defeat the leprechaun. Lubdan gorily bursts out of Ozzie’s belly holding the gold coin Ozzie swallowed years ago.

Lila, Katie, Rose, and Meredith eat pizza with Matt and Andy. Lila confesses to everyone that her mother, who died a year earlier from cancer, was thought to be crazy and never left their house because she was afraid of a monster.

Lila wakes the next morning from a nightmare of Ozzie’s bloody ghost. Lila also finds the basement flooded as Lubdan stalks around the house.

Having had sex the night before, Katie and Andy get into an argument while installing solar panels on the house’s roof. Rose admonishes Meredith for being irresponsibly hungover.

Lubdan spies Lila and Matt working together in a barn. Lubdan tries using his magic to propel a pitchfork at the pair, but realizes he is weak from being away from his gold for too long. Lubdan resolves to commit more murders to regain his powers.

Lila has another haunting vision of Ozzie’s ghost. Lubdan murders a mailman.

That night, Lubdan confronts Lila in her bedroom. Lila realizes Lubdan is the creature her mother was afraid of. Lubdan explains that he wants his gold back. Lubdan’s hand burns when he tries taking Lila’s gold necklace, which her mother gave her for protection. Lila tries to attack the leprechaun when the power sudden goes out.

Lubdan knocks over Matt in the dark to escape. Lila tries to explain that they need to find the others and leave the house.

Katie and Andy hook up again while trying to fix the fuses. Lubdan confronts Meredith while she is drunk.

Lila and Matt find Rose outside and tell her about the leprechaun. Meredith joins them to corroborate Lila’s claim.

Rose returns to the house. Lila, Matt, Meredith, and Katie watch as Andy fights the leprechaun outside. Lubdan uses his magic to slice Andy in half with a fallen solar panel.

Everyone returns to the house to recover Meredith’s car keys and regroup with Rose. Having previously made a deal with the leprechaun, Meredith locks Lila in the basement.

Meredith tells the others that the leprechaun killed Lila. Meredith, Rose, Katie, and Matt find Lubdan in Meredith’s car, but kick him out before frantically driving away.

Lila sees Ozzie’s ghost in the basement. Ozzie directs Lila to a hidden hole in the wall where she finds a map to Lubdan’s gold along with tips on how to combat him.

A struggle ensues when Rose deduces that Meredith lied about Lila’s fate. Lubdan races alongside the car by riding Matt’s camera drone. Lubdan ends up impaled by a tree branch while Meredith crashes her vehicle near Ozzie’s truck.

Lubdan recovers to confront Katie, Rose, Matt, and Meredith. Everyone flees. Lubdan uses his magic to murder Meredith with detached sprinkler heads.

Katie and Rose continue ahead while Matt stays behind to distract Lubdan with the drone. However, Lubdan takes control of the drone and uses it to decapitate Matt.

Lila finds Katie and Rose in the forest. The three of them follow the map to Lubdan’s pot of gold, but discover most of the coins are missing. Rose confesses that she found the gold weeks ago and used it to finance the house renovation project. Rose explains that the missing gold is now at a ‘Cash for Gold’ exchange in Bismarck.

Katie observes that Lila’s protective necklace is actually made from iron pyrite, not real gold. Since they are unable to return his gold, the three women look for more iron as an alternate means of defeating the leprechaun.

Lila, Katie, and Rose stage an argument to lure Lubdan back to the house. Lila gives Lubdan the pot of gold, which he discovers is stuffed with tampons. The three ladies trap Lubdan within a circle of iron objects, stuff a hose in his mouth, and pump him full of clover juice from their organic liquid supply in the basement. The leprechaun explodes.

While Rose sweeps up bits of Lubdan’s body, Lila and Katie go outside to collect wood for burning the leprechaun’s remains. The bits of Lubdan’s body morph into miniature leprechauns that end up impaling Rose’s face on a golden trowel trophy.

Lila and Katie come back inside. The miniature leprechauns reconstitute into Lubdan. Lubdan, Lila, and Katie fight. Realizing that gold conducts electricity, the two women electrify the gold coins strewn at Lubdan’s feet, causing a fire that begins burning the leprechaun as well as the house.

Lila and Katie leave Lubdan behind as they escape the house. Katie trips onto a piece of wood that pierces her chest, but she survives. The house explodes. A geyser of green slime drenches both women. Ozzie’s ghost waves to Lila. A Larimore University advisor arrives at the scene and escorts Lila and Katie away.

In daylight, Lubdan hitchhikes to Bismarck. Lubdan gets a ride on a chicken truck.

---

Review:

Attaching expectations to any movie can be dangerous business for courting disappointment. Given how low the quality bar continued dropping on each successive entry in the franchise, common sense tells even those with knowingly bad taste to not set expectations higher than an ankle for a “Leprechaun” sequel.

But with Steven Kostanski in the director’s chair, it shouldn’t be a pie in the sky wish to want something unconventionally imaginative from a member of Canada’s Astron-6 filmmaking collective, who’ve given us fantastically far out movies like “The Editor” (review here) and “The Void” (review here). Apparently, that’s asking a tad too much. While not necessarily a disappointment, “Leprechaun Returns” turns a blind eye to opportunities for irreverent inventiveness to deliver something that colors within expected lines for a standard Syfy B-movie.

“Leprechaun Returns” takes the “Halloween” 2018 route (review here) by cutting the albatross of convoluted continuity and starting from scratch where only the 1993 original exists. Gone are the leprechaun’s L.A. and Vegas jaunts, journey into space, and two trips to “tha hood.” As far as this flick goes, the limerick-loving Lilliputian was last seen dropping down a well with a clover in his mouth courtesy of pre-“Friends” Jennifer Aniston and her onscreen associates.

25 years later, Aniston’s character Tory has unceremoniously died off camera after living life as a recluse raving about miniature monsters. Tory’s daughter Lila now makes her way to mom’s old home in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. Despite being far off any beaten path, Larimore University makes its home here. Lila comes to join three other sisters in building an environmentally conscious sorority house on the site where that ominous old well still sits.

You haven’t met the ladies of Alpha Upsilon (AU is the chemical symbol for gold, get it?), but you know their archetypes. Rose is the neurotically overachieving goody goodie. Meredith is the boozy “I couldn’t care less about anything” slacker. Sassy Katie simply cannot say no to spontaneous sex with her argumentative ex-boyfriend Andy. Andy’s aspiring filmmaker friend Matt also slots in somewhere as a brief flirting target for Lila, but more so to motivate a camera drone kill later down the line. Once renovations get going, the work on the well resurrects Lubdan (impress your friends by informing them that’s the leprechaun’s name even though it’s never said out loud in the series), who desperately wants to reclaim his pot of gold, and eagerly drops bodies using macabre magic to get it.

I’ll say this for “Leprechaun Returns.” The kills are crazy. Lubdan gorily bursts from a familiar face’s belly. He surgically splits another person in two with a sharp solar panel. One man has his head run over by a van and one woman has a sprinkler spigot installed in her face. A straight-up decapitation may be the only non-unique death in the bunch.

I’ll also say that for all the premature worry about fan-favorite Warwick Davis not returning to the title role, his heir Linden Porco picks up the ball and runs away with it at full speed. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve seen the first film since the theater in 1993 and my memories of the sequels are so foggy, I may not have seen them at all. But for my blasphemous money, Davis isn’t missed. Porco easily earns a chef’s kiss for portraying Lubdan with all of the character’s trademark creepiness, corniness, and charm.

Under the thumb of a confusingly conservative hand, Lubdan’s early scenes are few and far between however. A movie of this campy caliber couldn’t possibly overdose on nuttiness, yet Kostanski strangely subdues the first half of the film.

“Leprechaun Returns” doesn’t go all-in on jokey dialogue and fully embrace its offbeat personality until the back half begins a sprint for the finish. It’s like the film doesn’t have a true sense of its own unusual tone until it’s had sufficient time to stew in a sty of carnage and comedy. Then the movie finally becomes something more akin to a better-produced Full Moon feature with a Troma-esque sense of humor.

By this point, you’re in such a “meh” mood from a typical two acts, the uptick in insanity for the third has its work cut out to pull you from a funk. The relative fun factor of a furious finale and brief snips of inspired scenes conflict with the trope-tastic exposition and beige-colored everything else. Regardless, I’ll err on the side of generosity with a three star score because that’s where we’re at with the “Leprechaun” saga. After six now imaginary sequels and the spectacularly awful “Leprechaun: Origins” reboot (review here), even a mediocre entry can earn a semi-enthusiastic, “eh, it’s okay.”

I’d watch another movie in this new continuity, if that’s any endorsement. I would just want it to go all the way off the leash and put more demented bite behind its average bark. Or maybe I should know better than to set any expectations at all, particularly where “Leprechaun” is concerned.

Review Score: 60

---