‘DEATH OF A UNICORN’ a Satirical Creature Feature that Beats the Dead Horse

When uptight compliance attorney Elliot (Paul Rudd) drags his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) on an out-of-state business trip, what was meant to be a major career opportunity takes a turn for the absurd: they hit a unicorn. In a moment of panic (or probably just impatience), Elliot bludgeons the moaning mystical creature to death and stuffs its bleeding corpse into the rental’s trunk. But not before Ridley touches its horn, forming a vague, E.T.-style bond with the mythical beast.

They arrive at their destination—a sprawling billionaire estate owned by Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), a pharmaceutical magnate who also happens to be terminally ill. Fortunately, the deceased unicorn appears to have magical healing powers. With the exception of Ridley, everyone – Odell, his opportunistic son Shepherd (Will Poulter), his icy, image-obsessed wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), and even the sycophantic Elliot — immediately begins scheming ways to monopolize and monetize the miracle turned road kill in the trunk. They’re staring down the existence of literal magic, and all they see are dollar signs.

Death of a Unicorn, written and directed by Alex Scharfman and released by A24, is a thinly veiled critique of Big Pharma, which is to say: not so veiled at all. The film doesn’t hesitate to assert that if a miracle drug were discovered tomorrow, it wouldn’t be used to heal the masses—it’d be hoarded for the highest bidder, reserved for those who can afford their salvation. And this upstairs-downstairs satire of capitalist exploitation and the soulless elites who keep operations profitable and the proletariat sick is about as subtle as shooting an insurance company CEO in broad day light. Or, well, a lawyer running over a unicorn. The film is messy, loud, occasionally a bit tone-deaf—but it’s also often funny when it matters.

For their part, the ensemble cast is a bit of a mixed bag. Richard E. Grant and Will Poulter steal the show as a pair of high-society sociopaths, the visionary viper patriarch and his soft, spoiled son. They’re perfectly pitched as rich assholes so far removed from their own and everyone else’s humanity they might as well be members of the Sackler fam. Jenna Ortega plays the wide-eyed “fair maiden” well enough, though the script doesn’t ask much of her beyond wistful stares and vague teen angst. And Paul Rudd’s, America’s once-charming wisecracker, schtick feels increasingly stale. He’s once again playing some variation of the soft-edged, good-natured smartass, only this time with more pressed khakis and a little less irony. It’s fine, but the Rudd’s in a rut and continuing to churn out the same slightly-modulated pitch of milquetoast performance role after role.

As is often the case with horror-comedy hybrids, Death of a Unicorn is a mostly diminished version of both genres. The horror amounts to standard survival fare—some ineffectual jump scares and a few chase sequences that crib heavily from Jurassic Park without adding much to the whole “we’re being hunted by CGI beasts” routine. There’s some gleeful gore, sure, and it is fun watching a pack of rabid unicorns impale entitled rich guys on their horns—but even that eventually starts to feel like, well, beating a dead horse.

The comedy, meanwhile, mostly holds its ground—largely because the film fully commits to the absurdity inherent in its premise. By the time the Odells have gone full feral, snorting powdered horn and sipping goblets of unicorn blood-spiked champagne between bites of its mid-rare flank, the film reaches a kind of deranged fever high that’s hard not to be spellbound by. When Scharfman really goes for it, like in moments like this, Death of a Unicorn can be an undeniably fun ride. But too often, it settles for being a familiar retread around the same old track… but with unicorns. And for a film boasting the most provocative title since Cocaine Bear, it equally fails to live up to the magic its title promises.

CONCLUSION: ‘Death of a Unicorn’ trots out a magical premise and some delightfully deranged moments, but too often defaults to familiar genre beats and thin satire. Despite a few standout performances and flashes of absurdist flair, it lacks the bite, originality, and visual imagination needed to truly enchant.