Death of a Unicorn

Death of a Unicorn, the feature debut of writer-director Alex Scharfman, will most likely subvert your expectations. This offbeat A24 production opens as a father-daughter road trip comedy, evolves into something darker and toothier, and eventually settles on a fairly conventional and underwhelming final form.

Paul Rudd plays Elliot, a widowed lawyer summoned to the remote Canadian lair of the dying pharmaceutical CEO Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). On the way there, Elliot butts heads with his reluctant plus-one, his teenaged daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega). During the tense talks, the duo’s rented car hits a large animal on the windy mountain roads. It is clear to us, particularly if you know the title of the movie you are watching, that this single-horned white beast is no wild horse. Elliot tries to put the wounded creature out of its misery, but not before a grip of its horn gives Ridley a spectacular view of the universe.

At Odell’s estate, the gruesome road encounter is all that the father and daughter can think about. Their contact with the unicorn’s blood has dramatic instant consequences. Ridley’s cheek acne has suddenly cleared up and Elliot no longer needs his prescription glasses. When the presumed dead animal begins raising a fuss in that rental car parked out front, no one can ignore it any longer.

The vague specifics of Elliot’s plan for the wealthy family business change when Odell, his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), and their playboy 30-something son (Will Poulter) begin to comprehend the revolutionary impact of the serendipitous road accident. Grounding the horn and extracting its DNA gives Odell a rapid, miraculous cure to his fatal cancer and the family’s thoughts immediately go to monetizing this unprecedented discovery.

At this point, the film begins to remind you of other recent “eat the rich” satires. With Grant playing the patriarch, Saltburn obviously springs to mind. Knives Out feels like another influence. The satire is no more effective than it was in Rian Johnson’s murder mystery and the world-building holds far less allure and intrigue than Emerald Fennell’s Prime Video sensation.

Rudd is as affable as anybody in comedy films of the past thirty years and yes, it really has been that long since Clueless got his career rolling. Even so, neither the Ant-Man actor nor his horror-seasoned screen daughter Ortega develop much in the way of our sympathy. The movie prioritizes the Leopolds’ hubris, as the family plans to grow its already expansive wealth as a direct result of the misfortune of one heretofore unreal creature.

While the film keeps us entertained through this second act, even without sufficiently developing or motivating its characters, that final form is where it loses its way. Scharfman ultimately turns Death of a Unicorn into a horror film and not the elevated ones for which A24 is known. More unicorns enter the fray. They are violent, angry, and determined to rescue their little one, who is clinging to life with his otherworldly magic.

Scharfman’s screenplay raises some interesting notions of folklore, utilizing old cathedral art to speculate on the nature of unicorns and our human characters’ dwindling hopes of survival. But it fails to develop its ideas to satisfaction. It plants seeds of a research-driven folk horror experience without fully committing. Instead of following through, it simply devolves into a standard-issue “who lives? who dies?” final act. It’s an unfortunate destination for a movie that seems too weird and thoughtful to devolve into routine, CG-heavy mainstream thrills. The A24 logo could easily be swapped out for a Netflix one and the movie’s existence would actually make more sense as “content of the week.”

Alas, this is an A24 picture, getting wide theatrical release. It’s been nearly a year since Civil War opened in first place en route to becoming A24’s highest worldwide box office performer of all time. But A24’s output remains much more of a niche attraction than a commercial force. Expectations for Unicorn are modest and deservedly so. Ortega might be as familiar a name as any 20-something actress and she might be coming off a prominent role in last year’s blockbuster Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. But no one today believes star power trumps IP. Scharfman’s original genre-bending tale is in theory the real star here and it is a hard sell that will fall short for many would-be and actual moviegoers.