'Death of a Unicorn' film review: Alleged horror-comedy is light on scares or laughs
Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega must survive the night after they accidentally run over a unicorn - and unleash the mythical animal’s fury in ‘Death of a Unicorn’ (opening in theaters nationwide March 28).
In short: A father and daughter (Rudd and Ortega) on a weekend vacation in the wilderness accidentally kill a unicorn - but a wealthy family has sinister plans for the dead animal’s body. Richard E. Grant, Will Poulter and Tea Leoni also star.
‘Death of a Unicorn’ is sold on the promise of “vengeful unicorns slaughter rich folk.” The fact that this horror comedy is an A24 flick injects some credibility to its horror intent and Paul Rudd anchors its comedic leanings. But as a whole, ‘Death’ only offers sporadic laughs and shock.
‘Death’ fancies itself as the shocking idea of a mythical animal representing purity on a bloody rampage - with an undercurrent of social class satire. And honestly, ‘Death’ could and should have been more fun and gory - but its small cast limits the number of victims. Any movie that sells itself as a gory romp has to live up to that promise - but ‘Death’ is only intermittently horror fun, and virtually all of these moments feel abrupt and anticlimactic. Admittedly decrying a movie for not being violent enough feels crude - but ‘Death’ leans on A24’s reputation for strong horror and sells itself as a bloody romp.
For a horror comedy, ‘Death’ is too lean on the laughs. While the script drops in a couple of laugh out loud moments, these moments are too few and too fleeting to define the movie as a strong comedy. And a script as absurd as this ‘unicorns on a killing rampage’ needs a comedic angle to compliment the plot’s lunacy. Richard E. Grant and Will Poulter give their best as ridiculously out-of-touch elites, but their scenes elicit nice little chuckles rather than guttural laughs.
Finally, as a piece of social commentary, ‘Death’ opts for the broadest angle of attack in its attempt to send up big pharma. Of course capitalists would try to grossly exploit a unicorn’s corpse for any and all maximum profit - because the script just sets the wealthy family up as self-centered, horrible people. Where most would see a miraculous myth in real-life, one rich family only sees dollar signs when they look at the unicorn. This is the laziest means of telling a “wealthy neo-liberals would butcher a unicorn for money” story. The script’s low effort is akin to throwing a raw steak in front of a lion - and being shocked when the lion just picks up the steak … and starts quietly eating the raw meat.
The script upfront establishes this family headed by a pharmaceutical mogul as all-too-willing to exploit and ravage nature for personal gain. This means the powerful family has no arc - they are firmly and quickly setup as terrible and end up only making terribly selfish decisions because being terrible is their nature. A smarter version of this story would present a group of morally uncompromised people with the promise of untold wealth if they’re willing to desecrate a unicorn’s corpse - and that script would just let them react to the situation. This script attempts a half-hearted version of this with the father and daughter duo, but the doting father starts out the story with corporate aspirations - this is the closest the film comes to any sort of internal character conflict as his daughter firmly does not agree with the family’s intentions for the unicorn’s corpse from the start. Essentially this is a monster movie, but the plot is entirely driven by character’s internal choices - and most of the characters are firmly set on their decisions pretty early on, which robs the movie of internal character conflict.
Final verdict: ‘Death of a Unicorn’ sounds great on paper - but this movie doesn’t quite find its footing, either as a horror, as a comedy or as social commentary. If any one of these efforts was a success, then ‘Death’ might have been a winner - but each effort has middling results.
Score: 2.5/5
'Death of a Unicorn' opens in theaters nationwide March 28. The horror comedy has a runtime of 105 minutes and is rated R for strong violent content, gore, language and some drug use..
