Director: Louisa Warren
Year: 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: Vengeance of the Leprechaun’s Gold
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Looking to make some fast money, a group of strangers are tasked with completing what was supposedly a silly request involving stealing leprechaun’s gold but when it turns out to be true and the malevolent creature begins stalking the group to reacquire it must outwit him to survive.
Review:
Overall, this was a rather solid genre outing. One of the finer features here is the great setup that gets this one going with a solid note featuring all sorts of appropriately intriguing characters in this situation. The whole idea of why they’re together, to pull off a silly mission for a sketchy businessman involving looking into a leprechaun’s pot of gold only to find that the legend of the creature was real all along and is now out to torture and kill them for taking it, makes for a fine starting point with the various individuals here coming together for their own reasoning. Whether it’s to handle the financial affairs of a sick one, provide a better life for a spouse who can’t afford their current lifestyle, or help pay off loans acquired through nefarious means, the central setup to bring everyone together here is a generally fun one with people down on their luck and unable to get out of it rather than just being equally sketchy underlings of the main boss getting attacked and killed off as that adds some nice gravitas to the sequences throughout here.
That plays a large part in the film’s rampage sequences as these scenes, however problematic they turn out to be, come off with a fine sense of viciousness and mean-spirited energy with the supernatural figure using his powers to exact revenge. With each of the characters going around after the heist and trying to utilize their genuine motivations for going along with it in the first place, these scenes feature some rather impressive confrontations with the leprechaun using either blunt objects to kill them normally or bring about his devious powers to provide a more gruesome and overtly nasty means of attack here which provides for some rather decent special effects for the kill scenes. Despite not being genuinely creative or over-the-top in the kind of manner this scenario calls for, there’s a much better sense of cruelty and carnage on display here by going for this kind of graphic encounter as this builds along nicely with the hints the creature’s there before he attacks that generates some suspense as well to all give the film a lot to like here.
There are some issues to take into account here. Among its main factors is the really questionable motive 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 tone where the film shifts tone depending on how it kills his target whereas the more supernatural-powered kills feel more malicious and unnatural compared to the more traditional stalking scenes. 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 fun enough genre effort let down by some minor drawbacks, this is pretty fun for this type of effort even though most of the flaws here might be more detrimental for some. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of the approach or are a fan of the creative crew while those turned off by these factors should heed caution with this one.
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