Exclusive Interview – Drew Daywalt on Leprechaun’s Revenge

We love ourselves some Drew Daywalt over here at Horror Fix so when we found out that the Camera Obscura and Fear Factory director was tackling the St. Paddy’s Day themed Leprechaun’s Revenge over at SyFy we tracked the fearmeister down to answer some of our questions! HF: Leprechaun’s Revenge seems like a very interesting choice for you. I’ve read interviews that say this is a SyFy film that feels like a parody of a SyFy film. Is the film’s self awareness intentional or just a pleasant surprise? DD: Great question. I think it was a pleasant surprise for a lot of people who hadn’t worked with me before. When I read the script, it screamed out to be funny. It was begging to be fun and light. And the cast and my crew agreed on that point. It’s a monster that’s a leprechaun, for crying out loud, so it wanted to be fun. We had a great time with creature design and really tried for a total reinvention of that, so, you know, it wouldn’t be a regurgitation of other things we’ve already seen. I wanted a sort of quirky modern dark fairy tale. There’s an etherial lightness to the film, even now, and an offbeat sense of humor to it. I saw that from early on, and just steered the ship in that direction. HF: Of course, the Leprechaun series of films is synonymous with the subject matter. Was there a conscious effort going in to separate this film as much from that franchise as you could? DD: Yeah, believe it or not I’ve never seen any of those films. (Let me duck for a second while my horror brethren pelt me with feces and rotten fruit) . But my sensibility is not to go that campy or wacky or silly. We walk that line a few times in this film, and there’s a wonderful schlockiness to what we did, but it’s more in the spirit of William Castle and Jack Arnold than trash cinema that’s laughable to watch. It’s very self conscious. Creature design was a big part of veering away from the big franchise, and so was the depth of the mythology. Even in something as light as this, I wanted to create a world with some history to it that seemed just a little bit believable.