I'm not sure what order he made them in but for me this was the fourth film by teenager Dan Allen that I have seen. It is also yet again another assurance that Allen is very good on the technical side of the camera and that all of his strengths lie there. The plot here sounds a little ridiculous because it is all built on the opening device of a schoolgirl fighting with her leprechaun and storming off into the woods only to find herself in deep trouble; indeed the plot is a bit silly and it does feel like it was constructed backwards, with the idea of the characters coming first and the reasons crowbarred in afterwards.
Accordingly the script struggles whenever it is about the dialogue rather than the idea, although the final twist to the plot does work quite well in terms of impact (just as well since this part of it was probably the starting point for the idea). With poor dialogue the amateur cast are also a bit too weak to carry it. Faux's Jack is actually pretty good though but Staff is too unnatural throughout. Burgess is dumped with the weakest character of the bunch, stuck in a silly outfit and made to do what I can only presume was meant to be some form of Irish accent (but I have to presume).
Where the film does work though is yet again in the delivery. Allen does have a skill with the post-production and technical sides of the film and here he tries out more ideas from his influences. The change in the look of the film in the woods is good but I also liked the words stylised into the shot – derivative perhaps but still looked good. The effects around the character Jack were surprisingly effective though and they made up for the rather obvious (and cheap) costume choices for all of the characters. Direction wise the film yet again shows that Allen has good ideas for shots and how to position the camera – technically it is hard not to be impressed at least a few times.
Just a shame that yet again he is let down by his own writing – maybe it is an age thing but his dialogue is regularly poor and it doesn't help his amateur cast one bit. Still – good delivery from the technical side and a good little film from Allen.