Death of a Unicorn

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.

Saltburn

Director: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Medekwe, Carey Mulligan, Paul Rhys, Ewan Michell, Sadie Soverall, Dorothy Atkinson, Shaun Dooley
Running Time: 131 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★) 

Emerald Fennell's Saltburn is one of those "blank check" movies where a studio is so bowled over by a director's early success that they've granted them the keys to the kingdom for a follow-up. It's a creative luxury many have used to make their ambitious dream projects that wouldn't usually see the light of day, polarizing critics and audiences alike. Now after 2020's Promising Young Woman, Fennel gets her shot, but deservedly so, since the last thing we need is for big swings like this to disappear as artists are shackled and second guessed.

With a script more interested in obsession than social commentary, its "eat the rich" tale combines elements of The Talented Mr. Ripley, A Clockwork Orange, Brideshead Revisited, and more unfortunately, the fourth season of Netflix's You. Intentionally lacking in depth, viewer enjoyment mostly depends on whether you feel the disgusting shocks are justified by a pitch black satire that starts promisingly enough before flying off the rails. Multiple bodily fluids are ingested and exchanged, as it bombastically hurls toward its destination, making for one of the weirder cases of style over substance.

It's 2006 and scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is starting his freshman year at Oxford University, awkwardly attempting to fit in before befriending wealthy and charismatic upperclassman Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Sympathetic to his troubled upbringing, the popular Felix takes Oliver under his wing, accepting him into his circle of friends. Reeling from the news of his father's sudden death, Oliver accepts Felix's invitation to stay the summer at the Catton family's Saltburn estate to relax. While there, he meets Felix's eccentric parents Sir James (Richard E. Grant) and Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), his unpredictable sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) and Elspeth's frequent houseguest Pamela (Carey Mulligan). 

Also joining them is Felix's cousin and Oliver's Oxford nemesis Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), a longtime fixture at the mansion who's becoming increasingly skeptical of the new guest's intentions. But Elspeth takes an immediate liking to Oliver, as he's quickly intoxicated by this opulent lifestyle surrounding him. Feeling truly accepted for the first time, his fascination with Felix escalates, along with the Catton family's bizarre behavior. The question isn't when Oliver will leave Saltburn, but whether he can, or even wants to.

You can sense Oliver's fortunes transform overnight after Felix's endorsement, almost immediately establishing him as popular by association. Felix casts such a spell over everyone that just being in his orbit gives Oliver a respectability he couldn't ever achieve on his own. The film's at its best when exploring this massive power imbalance that informs the essence of their parasitic friendship. And the two actors play those notes to perfection, with Keoghan's nerdy, withdrawn, deer in headlights protagonist thirsting for validation, even as we brace ourselves for the possibility he's being used. 

If Keoghan excels as this desperately awkward outsider, Elordi radiates an effortless cool factor that helps explain why so many are high on his potential as a major screen star. His performance remains remarkably consistent when the screenplay zigs and zags, subverting expectations of what was originally assumed about both characters. But once the action shifts to Saltburn and Felix's dysfunctional family enters the equation, the story heads into more polarizing territory.

Nothing that unfolds is particularly "offensive," just skeevy and gross, which could be the purpose. Even while inconsistently straddling the line between dark comedy and thriller, the production design of this intimidating estate (complete with a Shining-like hedge maze) is a sight to behold. Gorgeously lensed with some really impressive tracking shots, sets and costuming, it's nearly impossible to criticize on a technical level. The supporting performances from Grant, Oliver and Madekwe also make their marks, but it's Pike's deliciously droll Elspeth that leaves the largest. And Carey Mulligan is unrecognizable in her hilariously credited "Poor Dear" Pamela cameo, looking like she just escaped the set of a Pieces of April sequel.  

The real danger isn't this family or the estate itself, but what it represents for Oliver, whose compulsions know no bounds. And within these walls Felix is sent crashing back down to earth, the charming aristocrat he portrays on campus giving way to a scared, spoiled boy crying out for attention. Fennell needlessly holds viewers' hands at the end, overexplaining details that should be obvious to anyone paying attention. But the closing moments are a doozy, as the film gleefully basks in its own hedonistic excess with a final shot that wouldn't have seemed out of place in American Psycho.  

Overindulgent but never boring, there's just no telling how huge a disaster this could have been with a someone else at the helm. Leaving just enough of an impression to transcend the insanity, it's hard not to be impressed and repulsed by what Fennell does, knowing she'll come out of this a bolder filmmaker than she was going in. While way inferior to her previous effort, Saltburn's far from an atrocity, its admitted faults rarely stemming from a lack of vision.