The opening titles arrive at exactly the right moment. When a mythical horned equine suddenly expires, accidentally struck by a car, the words “Death Of A Unicorn” immediately fill the screen. It’s an enjoyable moment of schlock, gesturing to B-movie heritage, a nod to monster movies of yore. If only that sense of goofy fun fully permeated to the rest of Death Of A Unicorn. In the post-Get Out world, this is yet another bit of genre silliness that attempts, with noble intent, to staple some big, timely themes onto its goofy narrative, to somehow legitimise the daftness. Sadly, neither its high-minded nor low-minded efforts amount to much.
Paul Rudd is in both Embarrassing Dad Mode and Embarrassed Dad Mode as Elliot Kintner, an attorney being groomed for big things with the wealthy Leopold family. Rudd can do bumbling beta-male charm with his eyes closed at this point, but unlike his usual go-to nice-guy roles, Elliot is also a bit of a tool: desperate for his sullen college-student daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) to make a good impression with his boss and family — billionaire tycoon Odell Leopold (a typically imperious Richard E. Grant), his expensively dressed wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), and their preppy bimbo son Shepard (Will Poulter). Despite Rudd’s efforts, Elliot is too unsympathetic to be anywhere near a winning protagonist, regularly putting his career before his family and acting entirely in his own self-interest, despite a last-minute about-face. (“I will pay for the extra therapy!” he promises Ridley at one point.)
Another Rich People Are Bad film, told by an ensemble of White Lotus rejects.
Ortega, too, has proven levels of detached-goth charisma, but her Ridley is a kind of AI-generated Gen-Z archetype, who says things like, “Philanthropy is reputation-laundering for the oligarchy!”, eventually settling into the stock no-one-is-listening-to-reason hero, highly rational but thinly drawn.
That leaves the most memorable characters to be found in the obviously out-of-touch Leopolds, who see the sudden arrival of a unicorn corpse at their luxury mountain retreat as a highly marketable opportunity. Will Poulter as the Donald Trump Jr-esque heir-apparent enjoys some of the film’s best moments, hoping to defeat the unicorns in the “marketplace of ideas”, but nobody is especially well-served here. Written and directed by Alex Scharfman in his feature debut, this is another Rich People Are Bad film, told by an ensemble of White Lotus rejects. For a scathing satire of late-stage capitalism, your targets must be laser-focused and your arguments refreshingly original; Death Of A Unicorn has neither.
Nor are the wackier B-movie exploits entirely successful. The concept of blood-lusting, glowing-horned unicorns attacking witless humans is the stuff of Roger Corman’s wildest dreams, and there is certainly something to this premise, especially in the valiant attempts to hark back to ancient mythology and Middle Ages-era art. But there is just not enough suspense or dramatic tension here. Rendered largely in weightless CGI, the legendary creatures are almost as cartoonishly drawn as their human counterparts — like something out of A Minecraft Movie. As with the film as a whole, it’s all a bit toothless. Or, rather, horn-less.
