Review #334: Red Clover (2012)
October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #7 - Red Clover (2012)
I should start off by addressing the fact that I chose to review a horror movie that's centered around St. Patrick's Day, and I didn't choose any of the myriad movies in the Leprechaun series of films. Despite what you may think, the majority of the Leprechaun films don't actually take place on St. Patrick's Day, and I don't think it's in the spirit of the holiday to consider just anything that has to do with Irish folklore to be a St. Patrick's Day story. (Believe it or not, Irish culture exists on other days of the year too!) I'm pretty sure the first Leprechaun film does take place on or around St. Patrick's Day, but I don't really like that film and I thought it would be better to review something I hadn't seen.
Another thing I should say: I continue to be baffled by the fact that any time a horror movie involves a Leprechaun that isn't played by Warwick Davis, it seems the filmmakers thought the only option was to make it a silent feral beast. I get that Warwick Davis hit the bullseye and they are probably trying to resist the urge to just copy his schtick, but come on- Leprechaun folklore has a few major touchpoints, and being crafty and charismatic is pretty universal in all of them. It would be like making a vampire movie where the vampire is just a giant mosquito- like sure, you ticked the boxes for drinking blood and flying and being scary, but can't you see that the thing you made doesn't resemble a vampire in any of the ways people care about? I'd more easily accept a vampire that doesn't drink blood than one that isn't charismatic, but apparently when it comes to leprechauns all filmmakers care about is "they like gold, and have something to do with clover leaves". There's a point in this movie where a character sees a weird scaly-skinned humanoid in the woods and says "I think I just saw a leprechaun" despite the fact that it looked nothing like any leprechaun has ever looked in any fiction ever.
Anyway. I should probably get into the story. Red Clover starts off with a girl (Karen) out hunting in the woods with her grandfather (Pop). Karen stumbles upon a weird shrine with tons of horseshoes nailed to a tree, and at the base of the tree is a red clover amongst a field of green. She plucks it, and in doing so releases a feral beast (later referred to as a leprechaun) and she is cursed or something. The leprechaun then scampers off and spends the movie killing townsfolk and eating any gold they have on them to gain power, and Karen discovers that her town was built by people who captured the leprechaun and stole its luck for themselves. Her great-great-grandfather was hired to hunt the leprechaun, so Pop has some of the leprechaun-hunting knowledge passed down to him. So while the leprechaun is partaking of a diet of murder and gold, Karen and Pop have to collect four specific horseshoes from around town (I'm not clear on why they needed to be specific ones but that's how it is) to make a weapon they can use to fight the leprechaun. Once the leprechaun has killed everyone but Karen she blows it up or something and then the movie ends.
This movie was very not good. I already complained about how much of a waste the villain was, but also, I just didn't care about any of the characters and the lore & backstory was about as cookie-cutter as it could be. You could take the proper nouns out of Karen's family's backstory and replace them with whatever fantasy-themed gremlin you want and it would be whatever bad movie you wanted it to be. Much of the plotting of the film is dull as well, with characters not being willing to accept that leprechauns exist until a switch gets flipped and then they're 100% on board with belief in the supernatural. A couple scenes feel like they were written with comedy in mind (like when Karen's dad, played by Billy Zane who is totally slumming it in this terrible film, has a monologue about how he never told Karen how her mom died because she disappeared in the middle of a Black Friday sale and he gets caught up talking about the bargains rather than the pertinent details of this bizarre story) but I would never in a million years call this film a horror comedy. I'm not sure what it was trying to be but it didn't really succeed at anything.
Save yourself some annoyance, and watch a better St. Patrick's Day-themed movie. Just watch Leprechaun like I should have done.
Overall Rating: 3/10 Leprechaun Pimp Slaps
Inside Baseball: This movie has a character drop the term "Sharknado" in conversation, a whole year before the movie of the same name was released! That film was made by the same production company, though, so it was probably an in-joke for an upcoming project.
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