The Leprechaun’s Curse (2021) by Louisa Warren

Director: Louisa Warren

Year: 2021

Country: United Kingdom

Alternate Titles: Leprechaun’s Rage

Genre: Supernatural Slasher

Plot:

After mysteriously inheriting her father’s mansion, a woman and her friends decide to head over to the property and look it over, but when they realize that the property was built from embezzled money taken from a malevolent leprechaun must try to appease it before it kills them.

Review:

This was a decent enough follow-up to the original. One of the better features here is the straightforward setup that provides this one with a great excuse for getting everyone into the leprechaun’s crosshairs. Going with the inheritance angle while bringing the group together for a visit to get a chance to look over the property this one does offers the perfect way to get them there and introduce the series of personal issues between everyone. As the leprechaun sets up the discovery of the coins and the potential for interpersonal subterfuge as the notes and letters make it seem like there’s someone in the group out to ruin the experience for petty reasons, the distrust that brews between everyone serves this one quite nice.

That lets the film generate a series of decent confrontations with the creature around the house where it uses its powers to knock off the group one by one. With encounters in the swimming, outside in a secluded garden, beating them down to generate threatening tension for his stolen gold, or chasing victims inside the elaborate rooms within the house, the encounters here are quite fun throughout this one. Featuring some decent gore alongside the practical deaths he carries out or some conceptually intriguing bits here as the idea of the leprechaun using his supernatural powers like the ability to implant gold into a person’s body to cause them to drown or dismembering the body unreasonably, there’s enough here to make this worthwhile.

There are some issues to take into account here. Among its main factors is the same issue as the original where there are really questionable motives of why the creature never attacks consistently as the manner of switching up the means of attack is somewhat odd. The use of knives or other kinds of objects to slash and stab victims is fine enough and makes for a decent enough villain, but then to add in the powers he has where he can manipulate the body unnaturally or create gruesome wounds out of nowhere feel at odds with the type of film being presented. Having both here makes for a rather different time where the shifting tone depends on how it kills his target as the more supernatural-powered kills feel more malicious and unnatural compared to the more traditional stalking scenes.

As well, there’s also a series of equally questionable situations within here that don’t make any sense. The type of confrontations here are mostly reliant on suspense-less encounters where the victim cluelessly takes a coin and then is confronted by the leprechaun without much in the way of logic for why they would fall for the setup, and some of this comes off with the kind of believability that strains realism. The other factor with this one is the series of obvious low-budget drawbacks which feature all sorts of usual methods where the cheap mask of the leprechaun, the lack of proper scale or flimsy effects that are all expected here and don’t detrimentally hold it back but still combine to hold it down.

Overview: ***/5

A slightly disappointing if still worthwhile follow-up, this is an enjoyable sequel that pretty much works mainly as a point for those that really appreciate this kind of approach or the original. Those are fall in line with that mindset or are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like with this one while most others should heed caution in favor of looking at the original first.