Nerdly » ‘Leprechaun: The Beginning’ VOD Review

24th Sep2025

‘Leprechaun: The Beginning’ VOD Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Mary Eva Sharp, Mark Collier, Grace Cundy, Julie Ghallab, Ben Keenan, Julia Quayle, Jeff Turner, Amanda Jane York | Written by Alessandro Di Giuseppe | Directed by Rahul Gandhi

The leprechaun is back for another outing! No, not THAT leprechaun. I’m talking about Champdog Films’ leprechaun – who previously appeared in 2021’s The Leprechaun’s Game AND The Leprechauns’ Curse. Which means it’s been 4 years since the gold-hoarding, people-killing monster rampaged his way through greedy would-be gold thieves. And making the distinction between the Warwick Davies franchise and the Champdog Films is an important one – something that a number of other reviewers of this film seem to have missed and thus reviewed the film badly against the bigger budgeted US outings!

This time round, the story follows a family who discover a treasure box of gold in their late father’s house. What seems like a dream come true turns into a nightmare. They are stalked and killed by the real owner of the gold, the mischievous and deadly leprechaun.

There’s a reason this film SHOULDN’T be compared to the US-made series, mainly because this film looks like it has no budget – well, even LESS than the last two did anyway. And it’s an important thing to mention, as even with their low budgets, the 2021 films managed to create a distinctive villain in the titular leprechaun thanks to the performance of Bao Tieu. No one is credited with the role this time round though – unfortunately, it doesn’t look or feel like Tieu is under the mask here (the leprechauns a LOT shorter for a start). Instead, we get a much more stilted performance, one that focuses on quips and kills a la Freddy Krueger rather than the characteristic idiosyncrasies of Bao Tieu’s stylish performance.

Unlike the first two films, Louisa Warren is merely a producer here, with first-time feature-filmmaking duo Rahul Gandhi, who directs and Alessandro Di Giuseppe, who penned the script (and went on to write the ridiculous-sounding Bikini Nuns for Champdog as well), in charge of proceedings. Which is probably why this feels somewhat unconnected to Warren’s entries – perhaps the reason it’s subtitled “The Beginning”? Yet, whilst it feels different to both game and Curse, what’s interesting about Leprechaun: The Beginning is the fact that what I said about The Leprechaun’s Curse can be repeated here too:

Focusing on a mix of laughs and scares is not a bad thing to be honest, especially considering how daft the original concept was – a man-sized leprechaun, a guy in what looks like a bad halloween costume of a leprechaun at that, complete with ill-fitting rubber face mask and out of control wig, running round trying to terrify people (and not have them laugh at him!) It’s ridiculous, it really is, but leaning into the absurdity of it all, focusing on the leprechaun’s twisted sense of humour really works for this sequel.

But this film leans even more into the absurdity of it all. As I said, the killer leprechaun talks more, making jokes and posing riddles to his victims and – hilariously – killing them because he’s tired of how stupid they are when they don’t know the answers! That’s not to say there isn’t an attempt at some gore. There’s a heart torn from a chest, for example, that’s rendered in practical effects – even if said sequence just looks like someone pulling a real heart (probably bought from down the butchers) from just out of frame rather than from a character’s chest.

If, like Leprechaun Origins was (a film that shares a similar “reboot” moniker), this is a planned relaunch of the series, I can’t see this iteration garnering many fans. For me, it certainly feels like a comedown from the low-budget exploits of the originals, and I think I’m the only person who liked them in the first place!