Director: Alex Scharfman
Starring: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega,Will Poulter, Anthony Carrigan, Sunita Mani, Stephen Park, Jessica Hynes, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Kathryn Erbe
Running Time: 107 min.
Rating: R
★★½ (out of ★★★★)
For better or worse, Death of a Unicorn is both everything its title suggests and also somehow a lot less. Making his directorial debut, writer Alex Scharfman immediately gets down to business when a unicorn is struck by a car in what might be the film's most compelling scene, if only because that premise carries so much potential. But after creating an air of mystery surrounding where this story's headed, it unfortunately goes downhill from there.
Accurately described as a mix of drama, fantasy and action, it's all of those at once, yet plays as a single, irritatingly long joke that runs out of gas before the conclusion. Sure, it's messy, but the repetitiveness makes it feel more like a slog, testing viewers patience with how often one character is continuously ignored and dismissed. That even actors as talented as the film's co-leads can't save this speaks volumes, even if they fare better than expected given the circumstances.
Widowed lawyer Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) takes teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) with him to spend the weekend at the estate of his wealthy boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), also meeting his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and son Shepard (Will Poulter). But on the drive over, Elliot accidently hits and severely injures what appears to be a white unicorn with his car. Laying on the road near death, Elliot seemingly puts it out of its misery with a tire iron, though not before Ridley experiences strange visions and halucinations after touching its horn.
When Elliot and Ridley arrive at the mansion with a unicorn in their trunk, Leopold sees an opportunity to use the creature's magical healing properties to cure his cancer and monetize the treatment, enlisting his family, butler (Anthony Carrigan), assisstant (Jessica Hynes) and a pair of scientists (Sunita Mani and Stephen Park) to help. But while Ridley's research uncovers the true danger of what they're doing, larger, more vicious unicorns look to reclaim their young. With Ridely's warnings falling on deaf ears, Elliot will have to choose between his own daughter and an obsessively greedy boss.
Scharfman takes the increasingly popular route of satirizing the ultra wealthy, with all their bizarre habits, rituals and obliviousness to how normal people live or behave. This is taken to the extreme once the eccentric Leopolds uncover the potential windfall that awaits from replicating and distributing the unicorn's healing powers. But despite their makeshift lab and the reluctant support of a spineless Elliot, the consequences turn predictably dire.
Up to this point, seeds are planted for what should be an exciting mystery-adventure, until the script starts hitting the same notes. Feigning interest in Ridley, the Leopold clan do their best to shun the only character with a brain, writing her off as a clueless, angsty teen. But that gag's run into the ground when these affluent manipulators are bombarded with evidence that harvesting mystical unicorns isn't the safest idea.
The gory, chaotic unicorn attacks are accompanied by poor digitized effects, but considering how movies twice this budget often look worse, that's actually not the dealbreaker here. Neither is Rudd, who fares decently in a thankless role, his charisma partially shelved as the uptight Elliot spends most of the picture dutifully following the family's marching orders.
Ortega is the undeniable star of this, and while she can play moody teens in her sleep by now, she holds the film together as a still grieving Ridley, whose pain is only compounded by a father she can't connect with. Poulter's performance as the spoiled, patronizing nepo baby is also a highlight, but by the time Sheperd gets his, the plot's already preoccupied with redeeming Elliot, who treats his own daughter as badly as the Leopolds.
Rather than settling on a tone, the story's all over the map, squeezing what it can into a run time that feels longer than its 107 minutes. Luckily, the zany acting turns and occasional flashes of creativity do help keep everything afloat once Scharfman's script flies off the rails in the last two acts. While not quite funny enough to qualify as a comedy, but containing too few scares to pass as horror, its closing minutes feel unearned, leaving us to wonder how much better this could have been with a more consistent vision.
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