Death of a Unicorn suffers from ‘eat the rich’ fatigue, an increasing malaise present in the popular genre of class war satire, where bluntness and broadness replace originality and bite. Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega fail to anchor a horror-comedy send-up of big pharma in which unicorns become more than the stuff of fantasy—they become a Jurassic Park resource for the rich. Like velociraptors, they aren’t easily handled.
Lacking Spielberg’s skill for character drama and technical prowess, DeathofaUnicornis B-movie schlock pretending under its proud A24 banner to be a scathing and hilarious takedown of the venal rich. Throw in a mawkish father-daughter drama with superficial metaphors, too, and you have a movie sandwich that’s already stale.
Elliot Kintner (Rudd) is a corporate lawyer who will do anything to impress the wealthy Leopold family. Hoping to get a seat on the family’s pharmaceutical empire board, he drags his daughter Ridley (Ortega) to the family’s estate (or national park) in Canada. His job is to manage the legacy trust of dying patriarch Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant).
Despite her resentment at Elliot’s absentee parenting, Ridley hopes the trip will be an opportunity to spend proper time with her father. Elliot believes his optics will look better if the Leopolds perceive him as a family man. With Ridley’s mother recently dying of cancer, the rift between father and daughter is growing – Elliot is more intimate with his work emails than his daughter.
Elliot’s neurotic obsession with work has him distracted. While driving to the Odell mansion, he hits a horse-looking animal with his rental. With a purple blood trail, a glowing horn, and a celestial trip toward the cosmos when touched, Ridley promptly figures out they have run over a unicorn.
Ridley does what she can to help the creature, but Elliot, concerned with being late to meet the Odells and possible legal repercussions, bashes the unicorn to death with a tyre iron.
Cue the aptly placed title card of the movie, and the pair rush off to the mansion with the body in the boot and unicorn blood on their face.
Thinking they can avoid bringing attention to their fantastical incident, the Kintners try to act normal when interacting with Odell, his vain wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), and their spoilt son, Shepard (Will Poulter). They don’t anticipate the unicorn reviving in the back of the car, which is promptly put down again by the estate’s personal assistant, Shaw (Jessica Hynes). Once the group realises the unicorn blood has cured Elliot’s allergies and cleared Ridley’s acne, Odell calls upon scientists Dr. Bhatia (Sunita Mani) and Dr. Song (Steve Park) to experiment on and exploit the creature’s curative properties.
Ridley advises against this course of action, as per the warnings in the medieval tapestry La Chasse à la Licorne, but Odell is too ambitious with his new “wonder drug”. They incur the wrath of two much larger (and crankier) parents of the foal, who rampage through the group, leaving entrails and gore in their wake.
Written by Alex Scharfman in his directorial debut, the screenplay struggles to coalesce all the various tones and genres. As a satire framed within a gory b-movie, the film says little beyond ‘don’t let the uber-wealthy monopolise resources they don’t understand’. Taking a broad swipe at the Sackler family and their criminal empire of pharmaceuticals (and art washing), the initial antics with Belinda, Odell, and Shepard are humorous but entirely superficial.
Téa Leoni relishes her role as a charity maven by effortlessly becoming a matriarch who says she doesn’t remember to whom she sent vast amounts of money in aid. Richard E. Grant doesn’t extend himself in a role that he’s been playing for a while; he is a vile autocrat who sniggers into his Buddhist prayer beads while waving about a massive gun.
Will Poulter has the most fun on screen, even if he overplays the spoiled (and stupid) brat character long before the credits roll. The brightest spot is Anthony Carrigan as the family’s butler, Griff. His goofball charm feels the most earnest in the ensemble.
Unfortunately, for a film that builds its foundation on the friction between father and daughter, Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega are its weakest elements. Pitched as the pure maiden who can calm the stallion-based mythical storm, Ridley doesn’t live up to the characterisation. She spends most of the film worried, vaping and arguing with her dad. Paul Rudd doesn’t strengthen the argument; his everyman schtick and pathetic simpering become tedious and unsympathetic. Once the film reaches its dramatic climax, you’ll likely be grasping for straws for reasons to care.
The most robust entertainment comes from giant unicorns making spaghetti soup out of the household. Once the film gets into gear as a simple splatter fest, it doesn’t look the part, with murky and unrendered visual effects undercutting the detailed production design. Plus, the film’s final act undoes any goodwill the B-movie adjacent sensibilities try for in the lead-up—it fails to be horrific and hilarious simultaneously.
Death of a Unicorn is a satirical frenzy whose horns needed sharpening to make it an effective horror comedy. Its satire-lite tone and half-baked supernatural elements leave one wishing for more time inside the cosmic mind of a unicorn instead of the two charisma-free protagonists.
