Mess With the Horse, Get the Horn

Death of a Unicorn begins with lawyer Elliot (Paul Rudd) dragging his unimpressed daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) along to the country retreat of his bosses, the wealthy Leopolds. His hope is to make a good impression and seal his place on the board of directors at the Leopold's company but things take a decidedly unexpected turn when he hits a unicorn on the drive up the mountain. Despite his attempts to keep the accident a secret, the unicorn, and the fantastic healing properties of its horn are soon uncovered by the hosts, who immediately begin thinking of the best way to monetise their discovery. Turns out the unicorn is only a baby and mummy 'corn eventually arrives with vengeance on her mind.

The film aims to use the ridiculously over the top premise of being a killer unicorn move to provide some hilarity and carnage while smuggling in some observation and deeper meaning. Sadly, it fails at more or less everything it is trying to do. It isn't fast paced enough to entertain those looking for some monster mayhem, (aside from one character) it isn't very funny and any satire it is attempting is shallow and undermined by a flawed central character dynamic.

Richard E Grant and Tea Leona do well as the Leopard power couple, greedy and out of touch, they are all performative philanthropy and manipulation. Will Poulter is the best thing in the movie as their vacuous son who knows nothing except how to feign usefulness and talk entrepreneurial gobbledygook. Enjoyably slimy as they all are though, none of them are as loathsome as Elliot himself. Desperate to ingratiate himself to his overlords he continually undermines, belittles and upsets his own daughter to gain their approval. Time after time he goes against her wishes with the pathetic refrain that it will all be OK once he gets his slice of the pie from his superiors, even as it becomes more and more clear he is nothing to them other than a patsy. This kind of film has plenty of room for unlikable characters but him being so hateable is a real problem because, while this is a part slasher/monster movie, part societal commentary, the glue that (theoretically) holds it together is the relationship between a father and daughter mourning the loss of a wife and mother. Once her father has deprioritised her for about the fifth time you get the feeling Ridley would be better off of the unicorn just hurried up and spilled his guts. The obligatory last minute realisation that he has been wrong is far too little too late to redeem this weasel. It seams the film is relying on Paul Rudd's laid back charm to make the character likeable enough but his chill, awkwardly cool dad routine just makes him more annoying in this context. Ortega herself is good but really just a diluted version of a modern teen girl archetype she has played more fully in other projects.

On the killer unicorn front, there are some entertaining kills but there aren't enough of them to combat the slow pace and the final act both takes too long to arrive and drags on when it does. There isn't any tension as the human characters are the villains and we are actively waiting for them to die and by the time the finale arrives, the horned horsies may be as well be any random monster, as they stomp around the mansion with their generic roar.

Writer/director Alex Scharfman has been producing for over a decade but this is his first feature as the creator and it's possible he has been overambitious. Death of a Unicorn may have been more successful if it had focused on either simply leaning into its B-movie set-up or sharpening up its insights, rather than leaving everything underbaked as it over extends itself. As it is, there are entertaining moments but overall it feels like a bit of a chore to sit through.

5 girth-some horns out of 10.

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