Death Of A Unicorn's boneheaded yet enjoyable creature feature has a dull point
Impaling obnoxious rich people is most of the thin midnight movie's fun, but it doesn’t have much else on its mind.
Photo: A24
Though corrupting beloved, harmless figures from childhood is a tradition that has existed since those childhood figures themselves—a tradition ranging from alt comics to Newgrounds-era Flash animation—there’s been a recent gold rush on giving cutesy icons a horror-friendly bloodlust. Most of these IP grabs rest on their premise. An R-rated Winnie-The-Pooh? No need to keep writing after that. Killer unicorn flick Death Of A Unicorn plays in a similar space, but with enough effort and self-awareness to entertain beyond its simple contrarian premise. Embracing its late-night creature-feature stupidity, Death Of A Unicorn doles out the requisite notes of suspense and empathy, but wants nothing more than to hilariously rend its ensemble of greedy pharmaceutical clowns limb from limb.
And rend it does. Though debut filmmaker Alex Scharfman’s bookends sag and drag, finding dead air from the first moment distracted father Elliot (Paul Rudd) and daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) crash their car straight into a unicorn, there’s gory fun to be had once the concept gets all four legs under it. This fun primarily comes at the expense of the Leopold family, whom the daddy-daughter duo have traveled into the wilderness to see: Loaded pharma patriarch Odell (Richard E. Grant), on his deathbed looking to bring in Elliot as a partner; his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), scheming behind her politeness; and their blowhard failson Shepard (Will Poulter), confidently wrong and looking like he just stepped off a yacht. Though Elliot spends plenty of time sucking up and playing nice, the dead unicorn in his rental car’s trunk (a faux pas in any situation) undermines his efforts. It just won’t stay dead.