‘Death of a Unicorn’ Review
Stars: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Carrigan, Sunita Mani, Jessica Hynes, Stephen Park | Written and Directed by Alex Scharfman
Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega co-star in this blackly satirical horror from debut writer-director Alex Scharfman. Produced by A24, it’s a refreshingly original creature feature that delivers a potent cocktail of dark humour, emotion and monster-related thrills.
Death of a Unicorn centres on compliance lawyer Eliot (Rudd) and his college-aged daughter Ridley (Ortega), who have had a difficult relationship since the death of Ridley’s mother, some time previously. On their way to a remote compound owned by cancer-stricken pharmaceutical billionaire Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), Eliot and Ridley accidentally knock down and kill a unicorn, which Ridley bonds with by touching its glowing horn, shortly before Eliot bashes its head in with a tire iron.
When they meet the rest of the Leopolds – including charity-obsessed wife Belinda (Tea Leoni) and wayward son Sheperd (Will Poulter) – events take a sudden turn when it transpires that the unicorn isn’t dead after all, and what’s more, unicorn blood appears to be a miracle cure, quickly healing not just Ridley’s acne and Eliot’s eyesight, but also Odell’s cancer. While the Leopolds scramble to make billions selling limited edition cancer cures to their elitist friends, Ridley has reservations, and she’s soon proved correct when the baby unicorn’s angry and violent parents show up looking for their baby, prepared to skewer anyone who gets in their way.
To a degree, Death of a Unicorn is a film of two halves. The first half is a very effective, blackly comic satire, which brilliantly skewers philanthropist billionaires (sample dialogue: “Philanthropy is reputation laundering for the oligarchy”), greedy capitalism, cynical pharmaceutical companies and other targets richly deserving of a good goring.
The second half is a broadly conventional creature feature, in that it’s about the cast being steadily whittled down by murderous monsters, though the addition of the unicorns’ mystical powers gives that idea an extra twist. The satirical side takes amusing advantage of the more fantasical set-up too, with Leopold ordering his long-suffering butler (a superb Anthony Carrigan) to make him a purple unicorn steak, and Shephed secretly snorting ground-up unicorn horn.
The performances are excellent, across the board. Poulter and Leoni (who really ought to be in more movies – cast Tea Leoni more often please, producers) are very funny, getting the tone exactly right and grabbing most of the laughs as a result. Similarly, Rudd and Ortega are perfectly cast – it’s entirely down to them that the emotional father-daughter stuff works, giving the film a much-needed emotional edge in the process.
On top of that, the kills are fun, particularly if the idea of seeing obnoxious billionaires meeting nasty ends appeals to you. The film also deserves some credit for a) incorporating actual, real-life unicorn tapestries into the narrative (the unicorn tapestries, on display at the Cloisters, in New York) and b) upending the traditional view of unicorns as peaceful, magical, calming creatures.
If there’s a problem, it’s only that the film is slightly let down by the CGI work on the unicorns, both in terms of their overall design, which seems to vary from frame to frame, and their movement, which is very obviously computer-generated, rather than, say, mo-capping a horse or something.
In short, Death of a Unicorn is an entertaining and superbly acted satirical horror-slash-creature feature that gains extra points for its refreshing originality. It also marks out Alex Scharfman as a writer-director to watch.
***½ 3.5/5
Death of a Unicorn is in cinemas now.
