Death of a Unicorn
This horror-tinged comedy is a fairly blunt social satire, but the top-notch cast are very entertaining, and the central father-daughter relationship adds some unexpected pathos.
Premise: On his way to a make-or-break weekend at his boss’ estate in the Canadian Rockies, lawyer Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his teenage daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), hit an animal with their hire car ... only to find that the creature is a mythical unicorn. Soon Elliot’s boss, pharmaceuticals magnate Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), and his family spot an opportunity to exploit the creature’s healing properties for their own gain.
Review:
The tone of Death of a Unicorn can be a little tricky to pin down at times, veering between farcical comedy, social satire, and darkly humorous horror throughout the course of the movie. As a result, it can feel a little disjointed in places, and it’s probably fair to say that the social satire isn’t particularly subtle, and the splattery horror elements are never really scary (nor, I suspect, were they ever intended to be).
That said, the central premise of the movie is an interesting and fairly inventive one, and so even if the plot doesn’t hold that many surprises, it’s still never not entertaining. A large part of that is due to the fantastic cast: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni and Will Poulter provide (multiple) safe pairs of hands, and together they elevate the material considerably. The cast list is so stacked with talent that even relatively small supporting roles are filled by the likes of Anthony Carrigan, Jessica Hynes and Sunita Mani.
“…the larger-the-life performances are always entertaining…”
Ultimately, the Leopold family members are largely comedic caricatures: Richard E. Grant’s Odell is a master of advancing his own interests on the back of others’ work, while Téa Leoni’s Belinda is the personification of performative philanthropy, and Will Poulter’s Shep is an excruciating spoilt brat without any self-awareness. In the hands of these actors, these larger-the-life performances are always entertaining, giving us loathsome characters we can love to hate.
The surprise for me, however, was the relationship between Paul Rudd’s Elliot and his daughter, Jenna Ortega’s Ridley. They both play much more grounded characters than the Leopolds: a single father who finds himself struggling to connect with his teenage daughter. When we first meet them, it seems that Elliot has prioritised his work over this relationship with his daughter, but as the movie progresses (and I’m attempting to avoid any major spoilers here) the audience realises that it’s not quite that straightforward, and that Elliot’s primary motivations are more complex than simple career advancement. Where their relationship ends up caught me a little by surprise, and I was unexpectedly moved by the emotional layers that Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega brought to what was otherwise a fairly light-hearted and simplistic movie.
“…consistently entertaining throughout thanks to the talents of the cast…”
All in all, Death of a Unicorn may not change your life (or your views about the morals of the world’s 1%ers), but thanks to the talents of the cast it’s consistently entertaining throughout, and has a bit more emotional depth than I was expecting.
