Leprechaun 2 Review

Leprechaun 2 review.

Leprechaun 2 is stuck between the over-the-top weirdness the series will become known for and the relatively grounded nature of the original. Warwick Davis is in fine form as always…but the material around him is worse this time around. This is a series in search of a tone…and an entry that fails to set the right one.

Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.

Leprechaun 2

Directed by Rodman Flender

Written by Turi Meyer and Al Septien

Starring Warwick Davis, Charlie Heath, Shevonne Durkin and Sandy Baron

Leprechaun 2 Review

At the time of this review there have been eight Leprechaun movies.  Leprechaun 2 is the last one to see a wide theatrical release.  I’m not going to go as far as to say that the quality of this movie killed the financial viability of this franchise finding a wide audience…that would be disrespectful to the original film which does more than enough of that on its own.  Part 2 probably is the movie that hammered home exactly what you were going to get with this series, however.  For better and for worse.

Just over a year after the release of Leprechaun, Warwick Davis donned the green outfit and face prosthetics once again.  He remains as joyous in the part as he was in the first movie.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie has decided to take on his comic sensibility without an ounce of his talent.  The first film saw a fun performance surrounded by a story playing ridiculous things straight.  As the series progresses the movies get more comedic and outlandish.  Leprechaun 2 is caught somewhere in the middle.   It’s ridiculous…but it’s not funny.  Worse…it thinks it is.

Right from the beginning Leprechaun 2 makes the choice to completely ignore the first movie.  How this fits in to any timeline with the original is anybody’s guess.  Warwick Davis is the only cast member to return…which makes sense given it is telling a completely unrelated story.  Davis is so effortlessly entertaining in the role that he can make up for so much incompetence around him.  That’s really the story of the series…and it may never be more true than it is in Leprechaun 2.

I’ll be polite and say that the rest of the cast is not good.  It’s not like the script is giving them anything good to play with…but they manage to stand out (in the wrong way) on their own.  Unlike Jennifer Aniston following the original, the young cast here would not go on to meteoric success in the industry. 

It’s not all their fault.  On top of the bad dialog the movie also cuts an odd pace.  Scenes feel like they go on forever.  The movie seems to be in search of a laugh and does so at the expense of everything around it.  You could probably cut this movie down to a more enjoyable version…but then it’s probably 40 minutes long.  The long takes, poor script and lost performances evoke a (slightly) better produced Hobgoblins.  That’s why Davis’s performance deserves so much praise.  He makes a terrible movie into a bad one.  It’s an impressive accomplishment.

Thankfully, the series has figured out the Leprechaun is the star of the movie.  Some series take a step back when they make the antagonist the center of the story.  Freddy, Jason, and Michel Myers are all at their best when a good cast of likable characters are front and center to oppose them.  Leprechaun 2 doesn’t have that option.  It needs to put Davis on screen as often as possible in order to keep its head just below water.

As for the plot…well…there is one I guess.  The story begins a thousand years in the past as the Leprechaun is thwarted in his attempt to wed the daughter of his human slave.  As this was his 1000’th birthday and there are some incredibly strange lore additions going on here, he now has to wait another 1000 years to wed one of her descendants.  1000 years later that’s exactly what he attempts to do.  There’s still stolen gold mythology at play…but man…look how ridiculous we’ve gotten in just one movie.

When we reviewed the original Leprechaun, I wrote about how it is a movie that doesn’t know what year it is.  It feels like a late 80s movie released 5 years too late.  This was discussed as positive.  Leprechaun 2 shows us exactly why that is.  This is a movie that feels every bit of 1994.  Bad 80s horror is the epicenter of “so bad it’s good”.  Early 90s horror is where bad movies die.  1994 is too early for it to understand how to comment on itself or effectively wink at its nonsense.  And it’s too late for it to be a fun ride of brightly colored ridiculous ideas.  (Essentially) a slasher movie released at the valley of the genre. 

Like the movie itself, however, we find our attention back on Warwick Davis.  It’s hard to dismiss this bad movie as without value when you have him on screen as often as we do.  He’s always interesting…his choices always enjoyable.  He is so good in this role you can literally wrap the worst movie you can think of around it and it’s still a recommended watch.  If nothing else, Leprechaun 2 proved that.

Scare Value

If it wasn’t for Davis…Leprechaun 2 would have been a disaster. Thanks to his eminently watchable performance it’s elevated to simply “bad”. Make no mistake…this is a bad movie. It manages to be boring within its absurdity. Performances aside from Davis range from awful to…awful. It seems impossible that anyone is turning on Leprechaun 2 expecting it to be good at this point. Even if you’ve never seen these movies, you know what they are. They’re bad movies that are sometimes fun to watch. Even on that scale Leprechaun 2 probably ranks near the bottom of the series. Thank God for Warwick Davis.

2/5

Leprechaun 2 Links

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Leprechaun 2 Trailer

If you enjoyed this review of Leprechaun 2, check out the review for Leprechaun