REVIEW: Leprechaun: Origins (2014)

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Leprechaun: Origins: UV – WORST MOVIE I SAW IN 2014

This is not a Leprechaun movie. It just isn’t; I don’t care what anyone says.

You sit down to watch a Leprechaun movie with certain expectations which are not to be radically fucked with. You definitely expect a wisecracking leprechaun, you expect some cartoonish kills, and you expect overly-obvious commentary on human greed. Leprechaun Origins ignores all of this. The movie doesn’t even make fun of the Irish. Disgusting. And I don’t want to watch the same movie over and over. I appreciate some innovation. But this is an insult.

Let’s start with the “leprechaun.” Instead of a charming troll-like psychopath, the “leprechaun” in this movie (who, according to the credits, is played by WWE’s Hornswaggle, but there is no way to be certain) is a feral animal incapable of human speech. He doesn’t wear any clothing and he doesn’t do any fucking magic. He sees in infrared like the Predator and he looks like a mixture of a goblin from Lord of the Rings and a baby gorilla. About 95% of the shots of him are shaky-cam jump-scares with some messed-up filter so you don’t even get to really see how fucking worthless he looks.

This drove me fucking berserk. I kept waiting for him to morph into the leprechaun, or for there to be some big reveal that he was the leprechaun’s pet or something. Never happens. You have to wait 38 minutes for him to even show up and then it’s just him chasing four vacationing teens, occasionally snagging one and mauling them.

How about the kills? Say what you want about the Leprechaun movies, but their kills are the epitome of creative splat-stick. Warrick Davis pogo-sticks a guy to death, magically inflates a woman’s breasts until she explodes, launches someone into outer space, impales someone with a bong, and does a bunch of other evil shit that seems dreamed up by a brain-damaged eight year-old. This “leprechaun” just bites and claws people.

What about gold? Remember, the Leprechaun’s murderous lust for gold is the MacGuffin in the old films. There are maybe a combined 20 seconds of gold in this movie. The leprechaun wants it. He sees in infrared, but the gold pops out.

I seriously think WWE was making a monster movie and they just bought the rights to the Leprechaun movies and slapped the Leprechaun name on this crap at the last minute, editing in some bullshit about gold after securing the rights.

To make you feel better, click here for a one minute clip of all the kills from the original Leprechaun movies.

REVIEW: Oculus (2013)

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Oculus: C-

There’s this mirror that kills people. Ghosts also come out of the mirror and fuck with people. The mirror can also “possess” your reflection (which, I guess “possesses” your body too) and make you do bad things to yourself or others. It’s a lot like that movie Mirrors, which also focuses on mirrors that do the aforementioned mirror bullshit in almost the exact same manner.

The Oculus mirror can do a few tricks that the Mirrors mirrors can’t, including:

  • Inducing hallucinations
  • Playing stupid pranks on people
  • Fucking with space-time

Oculus switches between two stories and then squishes them together.

The past (10 years ago): One of the stoners from Dazed & Confused is married to Starbuck and their kids don’t like the new mirror in daddy’s office. There are ghosts and escalating scenes of confusion and terror culminating in the double murder of the parents.

The present: The kids are all grown up and have SOMEHOW tracked down the mirror, the supernatural potential of which they plan to assess. There are ghosts and escalating scenes of confusion and terror culminating in a predictable ending to a horror movie about a killer mirror.

The stories start overlapping and you see adult characters interacting with their child selves. Time and location become ambiguous. There are mirror ghosts everywhere.

The “research” one character does on the mirror is impressive. She single handedly traces the mirror’s ownership back centuries and manages to deduce all of its ghost-trick powers.

There’s this one scene where a character bites into an apple, which turns out to be a light bulb, which then turns out to actually be an apple. This sequence is the perfect embodiment of this movie; it’s one long dream within a dream within an “oh, it wasn’t a dream!” within a dream. And then someone wakes up. Within a dream. Times infinity. First there’s a ghost, then nope, it’s just a crazy person, BUT WAIT, a ghost that makes the person crazy, then a flashback, then characters displaced in time, then someone wakes up, then everyone is a ghost, then no one is… or are they? I swear this cluster-fuck was created by writers throwing darts at a board full of plot points.

Produced by WWE and yet there is not a single wrestler cameo. I was hoping Rowdy Roddy Piper would be a mirror salesman or Scott Hall would be someone’s stepdad or something. No one even gets hit with a folding chair. What a wasted opportunity.

 

REVIEW: Monster Brawl (2011)

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Monster Brawl: C-

This splat-stick wannabe Mortal Kombat movie dredges the the floors of Hollywood and brings up such cinematic legends Jimmy Hart, Kevin Nash, and Kurrgan.

Basically, a pair of wannabe commentators call a tournament that decides the World Heavyweight Champion of monsters. The format is a single elimination fight to the death, and all of the faves are there from Frankenstein to the Wolfman to Swampthing (“Swampgut”). Each combatant enters the ring and they have a pro wrestling match until one monster uses a foreign object or a special power to kill the other.

Jimmy Hart is the ring announcer and is flanked by 2 hot babes, and watching them sluttily smile, and wink was easily the best part of the movie. Lance Henrickson was given top billing on the cover, but he is literally not in the movie. All he does is a voice-over with random comments during the matches. He says shit like “discombobulating” or “tremendous” after high impact moves. It was a shameless rip off of Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat.

Overall it was entertaining, the fights were mediocre to above average, and we got to mock several B level celebrities while watching.

REVIEW: Death From Above (2011)

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Death From Above: F+

Professional wrestling is a tough sport that basically chews up people and spits them out once they become ineffective and outdated. Nowhere is that harsh reality more on display then in the new Kurt Angle / Sid Vicious foray into cinema. Kurt Angle plays an average everyday hick who stumbles upon an ancient tablet and once he reads it he becomes possessed by some centuries old spirit. I made the comment during the film that Kurt Angle looks like he was legitimately drunk during the filming and, lo and behold, it was brought to my attention that he has been arrested twice for DUI’s in the last 12 months. Regardless, the drunk and pilled-out Angle the starts stalking some other local hick who holds an ancient amulet he wears as a necklace, because Angle needs this piece to bring the master of evil into our world. This local hick is played by James “Wildcat” Thompson of TNA fame and his buddy is Matt Morgan of WWE fame circa 2005.

Throughout this shit-fest we get about 7 minutes of Monster Truck stock footage, about 4 seconds of mud covered breasts from chubby local strippers, Angle killing Tom Savini and former WWE and ECW wrestler Rhino, and some of the most low budget kills ever put to film.

Kurt Angle does not change his baggy jeans, or black shirt the entire film, and looks about as bad as one could look while still being functional. The conclusion of this film is also fucking awful; as Angle is trying to kill the Wildcat, Sid Vicious appears for his 28 seconds of screen time and while you would expect an awesome fight between the ring legends, all you get is Vicious pulling out a rubber lizard from Angle’s throat and then stepping on it. This film is like a metaphor for Angle’s career post WWE; a fucking downward trajectory.

If I were to hear that Angle died in the next 6 months ,I would not be shocked in any conceivable capacity.