Leprechaun 2: D+

The Leprechaun is unexplainably not dead and the events from the first film might as well have never happened. In fact, this could just be the first film; the plot is almost identical minus some lame prologue.

The audience learns that the Leprechaun is allowed to choose any woman he likes as his bride provided he can make her sneeze three times on his 1,000^th birthday. When he fails to score a bride in the first scene, which takes place 1,000 years ago, he vows to marry a descendant of this guy who fucks everything up for him. 1,000 years later, he finds a descendant to the bloodline and decides to make her sneeze and marry the shit out of her.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can roll out the exact same plot/pace/tone from the first Leprechaun film; with each minute, it becomes clear that you are watching a clone of Leprechaun 1 and at no point will it ever stray from the design you have already experienced in that movie. There is more of the same comical carnage. There is more of the same iconic classical Leprechaun-lore contorted to fit into a horror film. They don’t even pretend to give a shit about film making with this one; it reminds me of a stand-up comedian telling the same jokes over and over.

Why doesn’t the movie get an F or UV? There is the establishment of a new trend to appear in this film and the Leprechaun films that follow: the “be careful what you wish for when you get three wishes from the Leprechaun because he will twist your words around to kill that ass” model of kill. This setup becomes a favorite for writers in the coming years and, I suspect, helped to inspire the Wishmaster films (which started a few years later) in which EVERY fucking kill is ironically rooted in “be careful what you wish for” and “ZING, you got your with but you are fucking dead.” This setup is a double-edged sword; these kills are fun because the character flaws of assholes in the movie wind up getting them murdered but they also make the kills super-predictable because you can spot the fatal flaws a mile away once you start watching the movie.

One guy wishes for the Leprechaun’s gold, which the Leprechaun joyfully teleports into the guy’s stomach, stretching his shit out like someone in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Then the dude wishes for the Leprechaun to take his gold back, so, of course, the gold is promptly ripped from his stomach, killing him. ZING! The Leprechaun pogo-sticks on some dude’s chest until he dies, which is awesome. There is shape-shifting, bad one-liners, midgets, and just as much mayhem as the original film. It is still pretty charming, but it doesn’t take much guts to make a horror sequel that so closely mirrors its predecessor, so that’s also why it’s a cut below Leprechaun 1; it took some balls to make the first film, but anyone could follow the formula and cash in on the same basic model of splatstick with minimal (or virtually no) innovation.

I can’t even believe that this shit got a theatrical release, though. What were they thinking?

In Leprechaun 1, they had to use magic and a huge fucking explosion to defeat the Leprechaun. In Leprechaun 2, they attack him with a crowbar and he dies. Aaaaaaand there’s another single gold coin cliffhanger.