Directed by: Alex Scharfman
Distributed by: A24
Written by Anna Harrison
60/100
“Eat the rich” movies are a tricky balancing act. They show off wealth, and no matter how horrible the rich people are, the audience will always, even if secretly or shamefully, want some of that money. How could you not? There are beautiful houses, expensive clothes, delicious food… what’s a little amorality when you could have anything your heart desires, except perhaps a heart itself? Add to this the fact that these movies have become a dime a dozen (“Glass Onion,” “Saltburn,” “Blink Twice,” or any number of films released in the past few years) and movies like “Death of a Unicorn” lose their bite, despite adding some sharp teeth to the mythical creatures.
This isn’t to say that “Death of a Unicorn” is a terrible movie or shouldn’t have been made, only that if you are seeking anything revolutionary, look elsewhere; there’s nothing radical about its politics (rich pharmaceutical family bad), but the addition of the titular unicorn adds a level of zaniness not found in many of the recent slew of similar films. Plus, I like horses. They’re great.
The death of said unicorn happens as pharmaceutical employee Elliot (Paul Rudd) drives his edgy, vape-inclined teenage daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), to an isolated mansion where his ailing boss, Leopold Odell (Richard E. Grant) awaits. Elliot, running late and distracted by a phone call from a disappointed Leopold, hits an unknown animal with his car. This results in two immediate problems: one, Elliot was driving through a nature reserve owned by the Odells, and the laws there are clear about any harm caused to the wildlife within. Two, the creature was, most definitely, a unicorn.
Though Ridley feels compassion—and a near-spiritual sense of connection to the thing—towards it, Elliot bludgeons the creature to death with a tire iron and, fearing that the Odells will realize what he’s done, stuffs the carcass in the trunk of his car. Elliot and Ridley arrive at the Odell’s compound, where in addition to Leopold, they are greeted by Leopold’s wife, Belinda (Téa Leoni), and son, Shepard (Will Poulter). The three Odells are, predictably, insufferable, and instantly at odds with Ridley, your run-of-the-mill anti-establishment art history major. This only worsens when it turns out the unicorn is not dead, and the Odell’s assistant/bodyguard, Shaw (Jessica Hynes), is forced to shoot the thing again. Then, miraculously, the Odells discover that the unicorn’s body contains healing properties, and, like any good pharmaceutical company, they decide to turn a profit from it. Unluckily for the Odells—and for Elliot, who is now trying to use this accident to boost his career—the unicorn was a baby, and its parents are very deadly and very, very angry.
What follows is a movie split into three unequal parts: one part satire, one part creature feature, and one part father-daughter drama. Director and writer Alex Scharfman can never quite balance the three, leaving the movie feeling lopsided and listless. As a satire, it’s toothless, but elevated from committed performances from Leoni, Poulter, and Grant (and Anthony Carrigan as long-suffering butler Griff); there’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but the actors elicit more than a few chuckles. The bad guys get punished, and the good guys get their due, save for one unnecessarily gory death involving a hitherto ambiguous but largely decent person. It invokes Katie McGrath’s drawn-out demise in “Jurassic World,” and the gender politics of it all—when most of the men get quicker, easier deaths—are a bit murky. As a creature feature, it’s never particularly scary. Beats are telegraphed too far in advance, and the cinematography from Larry Fong never does anything to heighten the suspense, but the unicorn design (both physical and sound) is great. As a father-daughter drama and wannabe meditation on grief—Elliot’s wife and Ridley’s mother has recently died, you see—it falls completely flat, reduced to a tiny handful of scenes that feel shoehorned in to give us emotional investment.
If even just one of the three genres had worked a bit better, then “Death of a Unicorn” might have had something more to say, and might have been more than the sum of its parts; the actual product adds up to something perfectly enjoyable for an afternoon, but nothing as wacky or daring as its title might imply. Not to sound too much like the lecherous Odells, but the market is crowded—if you want to stand out, you have to be a bit bolder than this.
“Death of a Unicorn” Trailer
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