I can’t even explain why I decided to watch this.

What’s It About? Four friends visit a village in the Irish countryside, where the locals secretly plan to sacrifice them to a certain carnivorous, gold-seeking monster.

STRAIGHT UP: Poor cinematography meets bland execution. 4.5/10

What I Liked

Everyone is kind of a jerk – The movie sets up for a classic “best friends’ vacation turns deadly” scenario, but in a surprising twist, none of the four main characters seem to like each other very much. They have a lot of arguments even before things turn bad – and once they do, they’re all in a hurry to ditch each other at every opportunity. Somehow, this feels more realistic to me than the “no one left behind” attitude taken by most characters in horror movies.

That one really good kill – Most of the characters here end up dead, but only one kill scene caused me and my friends to shout out in surprise. Look for it in the latter half of the movie, when the heroes return to the abandoned cabin; it’s swift, brutal, and satisfying.

Hamish – This old man has some serious muscle and handles a shotgun like a champ. I took him seriously as an antagonist.

What I Disliked

A generic leading monster – As a featured creature, the leprechaun leaves much to be desired. It doesn’t have a distinctive look, a signature audio cue, or any interesting behaviors. It’s… short, I guess, and it seems to like gold… but the film doesn’t really emphasize these traits much, or do anything creative with them.

Predictable plotting – My friends and I tried to call the shots as the movie went on, predicting who was going to die, who was going to turn traitor, what the bad guys were up to, and where or when the leprechaun would appear. We guessed right most of the time.

Cut-rate camera work – The director uses various techniques (shaky cam, motion blurring, even a Predator-inspired heat-vision effect) in an effort to obscure the leprechaun from the audience and/or make it seem more terrifying. It’s a good idea in theory, but there are so many of these camera effects – and so little logic behind how or when they’re used – that they inspire feelings of confusion and annoyance rather than dread. Beyond that, the shot composition in certain scenes is amateur-grade.

Awkward acting performances – I’m no expert judge of talent here, but even I noticed more than a few strained facial expressions and stilted line deliveries during the film.

Not enough grindhouse flavor – A great way to elevate low-budget, straight-to-video horror fare like this is to lay the gore on thick and make a spectacle out of it. There were a few scenes that could have gone in really gruesome directions, but the movie never committed to it. The leprechaun does most of its damage offscreen, and even its most graphic kill felt strangely subdued. The material here already warrants an R rating, so why not have some fun and push the limits with some good old-fashioned ultraviolence?

CLOSING THOUGHT: I’m at an impasse here. In general, I think ambition should be rewarded, so I feel like I should praise Leprechaun: Origins for taking a silly concept and trying really hard to re-interpret it as a serious horror movie – except that this time, I neither wanted nor expected serious horror. I came to see a schlocky B-movie, and instead got something that was… still not very good, but also too self-serious to have any kind of fun with it. Also, as a fan of WWE, I was at least a little interested in seeing Hornswoggle in the title role, but he’s unrecognizable as the re-imagined leprechaun. I would have rather watched him carve up teenagers while wearing the classic green hat and jacket – which might not have been scary, but at least would have been entertaining. That’s the crux of it, really – this movie isn’t bad or ridiculous enough to be enjoyed ironically, but it’s not smart or frightening enough to keep company with something like, say, Alien. It’s still better than a couple of Hollywood blockbusters I’ve seen this year, but at the end of the day, it’s forgettable.