I’d like to focus on two elements of “Leprechaun Returns,” the only installment in the “Leprechaun” horror series to directly continue the narrative of the original 1993 film.
To explore the first, I must mention that Mark Holton returns as the mentally disabled then-handyman Ozzie, who here is a lonely cab driver dismissed by his small North Dakota town as a “weirdo.” Jennifer Aniston’s teenage protagonist Tory is also mentioned and becomes indirectly important to the plot. Indeed, both Ozzie and Tory as well as a third character — Tory’s daughter Lila, played by Taylor Spreitler — are used for effective social commentary on mental illness.
That’s pretty striking. This is perhaps the only “Leprechaun” movie to have a legitimate social consciousness, although I’ve joked that “Leprechaun 4: In Space” (which I also reviewed) could be viewed as a critique of American imperialism. Yet “Leprechaun Returns” has sincere subtext as well as the tongue-in-cheek kind, with a moving storyline about the pain of coping with trauma. Characters are not being believed because they bear the stigma of mental illness, a problem that informed Holton’s character arc in the first movie and does so again here. The stigma also harms Lila and, we learned, Tory. The film has some quietly touching dramatic scenes between Holton, who puts in a thoughtful and empathic performance, and the equally talented Spreitler.
The other element to this movie – and, of course, the most important one — is that it works very well as a splatter and slasher film. There are some great gory deaths, particularly with the more obnoxious side characters, and Linden Porco is a suitable substitute for Warwick Davis’ iconic depiction of Lubdan the Leprechaun. People who see a “Leprechaun” movie want grotesque leprechaun make-up, corny but fun one-liners and creative deaths. They’ll get all of that.
Yet they’ll also find something a little extra. This is a proper sequel to the first movie in spirit as well as narrative, even though it was released a quarter-century later. There are some clever jokes about how technology has changed our lives, but the real message seems to be that we aren’t much better at listening to “crazy” people now (well, 2018) than we were in 1993.
My favorite parts of this film — and I believe these are put there intentionally — were those that actually tried to develop the Ozzie and Lila characters. The film actually explores what it’s like to live with mental illness, both developmental and caused by psychic scars. This stretches from the survivors of the first film (or at least the only two that are mentioned, Ozzie and Tory) to the next generation that they guard over, Lila. They made me actually invested in the story and their fates. The environmentalist subplot and its obnoxious characters, by contrast, are mere meat for the genre grinder… tasty, tasty meat.
As a serious horror flick — from scares and gore to actual story quality — this is easily the best “Leprechaun” movie.