Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega accidentally kill a magical beast in Death of a Unicorn, but it’s Alex Scharfman’s horror comedy that’s truly lifeless.
Uninspired, predictable, and devoid of both the laughs and frights it seeks, this dreary A24 throwaway has nothing going for it save for Will Poulter’s witty performance as a scion who covers up his untalented idiocy with embarrassing arrogance. Unlike its unique and fantastical title creature, it’s a commonplace monster mash which serves up only frenzied commotion and tired social commentary, all of it revolving around a unicorn horn that increasingly comes to feel like a middle finger being raised to the audience.
On their drive to a wilderness reserve lodge owned by pharmaceutical bigwig Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), lawyer Elliot (Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Ortega) crash headfirst into a unicorn whose blood is a swirly purplish shade and whose horn glows with fiery light.
When Ridley touches its corkscrew-y spike, she has a transportive 2001-ish vision of flying through the cosmos toward a shining bright light—a journey that’s interrupted when Elliot decides to put the steed out of its misery by bashing its head in with a tire iron, in the process splattering himself with blood. They then put the corpse in the back of their SUV and proceed toward their destination, where they apparently assume that no one will notice that their vehicle is smashed up and they have a mythic animal in their easily viewable trunk.
Odell is dying of cancer and Elliot has been summoned to this remote residence to sign a contract that will set him up for life. They’re joined by Odell’s wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and son Shepard (Poulter), as well as the family’s butler Griff (Barry’s Anthony Carrigan) and two scientists (Sunita Mani and Steve Park).
Ridley is unhappy about this getaway and, moreover, is on the outs with her dad for oblique reasons related to the untimely death of her mother, and her refusal to play nice in front of Elliot’s boss causes him considerable stress. Such tensions are exacerbated by the unicorn coming back to life in the car, immediately after which Odell’s security chief Shaw (Jessica Hynes) puts a bullet through its head.
Ridley soon discovers that her acne has magically cleared up, just as Elliot’s eyesight has improved and his allergies have vanished, indicating that the unicorn possesses amazing healing powers. Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Odell has his minions shave down the beast’s horn and turn it into an IV fluid that instantly cures him of his fatal disease, verifying that he now owns a limited supply of an insanely in-demand miracle remedy for any and every type of malady.
This promises to make everyone insanely rich, including Elliot, whose main motivation is garnering enough wealth to support Ridley. Yet the young girl believes that this is a terrible idea, not merely because she now shares a supernatural bond with the creature, but because her research into the Cloisters’ Unicorn Tapestries (which she once visited with her late mother) implies that carnage awaits those who dare imprison a unicorn.
Ridley is, of course, correct, and these individuals are swiftly attacked by two larger unicorns—the deceased baby’s parents, apparently—with dark fur, gigantic horns, and a ferocious attitude.
Scharfman orchestrates that carnage with much thrashing, impaling, goring, and disemboweling, but despite the proceedings’ brutality, Death of a Unicorn’s nasty centerpieces are timidly executed, with the ghastliest sites seen in quick, blurry snapshots that end before they come into focus. They’re also seriously unscary, with each kill transparently telegraphed ahead of time. What’s left, then, is a lot of panicked screaming from humans and angry whinnying from the four-legged fiends, the latter of which are made duller by chintzy CGI effects. Simply put, the unicorns look painfully fake.
Death of a Unicorn’s critique of profiteering Big Pharma creeps is monotonous, with Grant and Leoni playing caricatures defined only by their lack of distinctive personality.
Thankfully, the same can’t be said of Poulter, who turns Shepard into an amusingly clownish figure of entitled greed and boundless haughtiness. His entrepreneurial designs are a clear sign that he’s an unserious wannabe who’s not the equal of his imperious dad, and his collection of interests (archery, photography, hot tubbing) underline his unskilled amateurishness. Shepard is a live wire in a film full of milquetoast duds, praising and condemning ideas and people like a cocky nobody who fancies himself a somebody.
By the time he’s snorting powdered unicorn horn, his eyes alight with sparkling rainbow hues, Shepard has become the sole reason to remain engaged with Death of a Unicorn, which otherwise has its avaricious characters doing their best to foolishly harvest the dead unicorn and idiotically hunt its mom and dad.
Ortega’s Ridley begs everyone to listen to her (because she thinks she knows the truth about the unicorn’s intentions) and Rudd’s Elliot behaves like a blind idiot so the film can keep its protagonists in peril. They’re too slight to be sympathetic and too one-note to be funny. Nonetheless, they’re still more interesting than the ciphers played by Grant, Leoni, and Carrigan, the last of whom is almost criminally wasted by Scharfman’s script.
Set exclusively at the Leopold’s forest-surrounded enclave, Death of a Unicorn is limited in scope and imagination, its set-ups as lethargic as its condemnations, and it barely bothers to lace its mayhem with any genuine fairy-tale enchantment; the best it can do in that regard is have Ridley fleetingly wear a Little Red Riding Hood-style sweatshirt.
There’s a tossed-off quality to the film’s every element, so that crucial plot points and relationships are haphazardly introduced and never developed, and most everyone perishes in an offhand manner that deepens the impression that the director just thinks of them as pawns.
Much mumbo-jumbo about renewal, resurrection, and the afterlife clutters up the climax, further crushing any humor underfoot (hoof?). The final scene’s attempt at conjuring up wondrous grandeur is somehow even more unsuccessful, although at least a concluding collision proves a fitting way to end this genre-cinema car crash.
