The film franchise that’s delighted a growing fan base over the years—Leprechaun—was rebooted to Leprechaun: Origins. Backpacking through the lush Irish countryside, two unsuspecting young couples discover a town’s chilling secret. Ben (Andrew Dunbar), Sophie (Stephanie Bennett), David (Brendan Fletcher) and Jeni (Melissa Roxburgh) quickly discover the idyllic land is not what it appears to be when the town’s residents offer the hikers an old cabin at the edge of the woods. Soon, the friends find that one of Ireland’s most famous legends is a terrifying reality. In this roundtable interview, director Zach Lipovsky reveals how he approached this rendition of the classic horror tale to make it fresh, current and unique.
How did you approach this film, and how did you make it unique, with so many slasher films out there?
Zach Lipovsky: The cool thing that excited me about it initially was the idea of rebooting Leprechaun. In the past, the franchise was kind of a tongue-in-cheek horror comedy. The challenge was, is there a way to legitimately make this a scary, R-rated, grounded, Guillermo del Toro-style horror film—rather than something that’s tongue-in-cheek. While the latter was done very well in the previous franchise, we wanted to update it for today, creating something that isn’t just a little guy in a suit, but something that’s actually terrifying and disgusts you.
How did you approach the violence in the film?
ZL: The approach was: what can we do from a violence perspective that is unique to this creature? What can we do that no one’s ever done before, that you can only do in this movie? A lot of it had to do with how gold is used in the film, as well as what the Leprechaun is trying to get from other people. The film is not torture porn. It’s much more in the slow-reveal style of Jaws, where you don’t see the explicit nature of the deaths. There’s enough suspense to build as you go through the film. So by the time you get to the more iconic, graphic elements that make it an R-rated film, you’re more heavily invested. So it’s a bit more paced out and specific to what a leprechaun like this would do.
Do you go into the mythology of leprechauns?
ZL: Yes. Today, leprechauns are often depicted as cute little creatures on cereal boxes. But 3,000 years ago, the Celtics might have met something in a deep, dark cave that was actually pretty scary. And from there, the elements of stories they told became the silly depiction of leprechauns we have today. So we were looking for something that had kind of a biological origin to it, something legitimate that could terrify you and still have the elements that make it recognizable as a leprechaun.
Alex A. Kecskes is a published author of "Healer a Novel" available on Amazon. He has written hundreds of film reviews and celebrity interviews for a wide variety of online and print outlets. He has covered red carpet premieres and Comic-Con events for major films and independent releases.
