★★½ out of 5 -- Rated: R -- Run time: 1 hour, 48 minutes
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I suspect that the parents of the 5-year-old girl sitting near me at the screening of “Death of a Unicorn” thought that a movie using the name of a mythical beast in the title must be family-friendly.
I sincerely hope that after 104 minutes of some very gory scenes, their child wasn’t too traumatized by all the bloodletting. (And hopefully the parents learned to maybe research their movie choices a little more.)
“Death of a Unicorn” is a horror film (with touches of humor) about a lawyer (Paul Rudd) who takes his teenage daughter (Jenna Ortega from the TV series “Wednesday”) to the isolated mansion of a rich pharmaceutical family located in the beautiful Canadian Rockies. The scenery here is stunning although the movie was actually shot mostly in Hungary and Slovenia.
The lawyer’s task is to get some legal documents signed by the dying patriarch (Richard E. Grant from “Saltburn”), but on the drive, he winds up crashing his car into a mysterious animal on the road. (The collision scene is very realistic, with a terribly sickening thud sound effect.)
The crash traumatizes both father and daughter, but it’s the teen who is most deeply affected, especially after she begins to sense that she and the apparently dead unicorn have some kind of bond.
Things get more interesting when they take the body to the compound and meet the ultra-rich drug family that seems to be inspired by the Sacklers of opioid infamy.
Besides Grant, there’s also his unpleasantness-avoiding wife played by Tea Leoni (“Madam Secretary”), their hyper, coked-up son (Will Poulter of “We’re the Millers”), as well as a variety of employees, including the very funny Anthony Carrigan (“Barry”) as their under-appreciated butler. Carrigan is hilarious with some great caustic comments but is sadly underutilized in the movie.
This is writer/director Alex Scharfman’s first feature film, and he struggles with some of the characters.
Paul Rudd’s dad/lawyer comes off very wishy-washy for a good part of the film, while the very talented Jenna Ortega has to overcome an uphill journey to make her moody character more likable. Eventually, both characters dial in, but it takes a while.
Scharfman manages to keep the story moving along, revealing that the unicorns have magical powers….and the capacity to do a lot of damage when they are angry.
There is a lot of violence in the last third of the movie, with some of it being very graphic.
(I lost track of the number of unicorn-horn-goring scenes.)
The unicorns themselves are primarily digital computer characters, but some of the close-ups utilize impressive, first-rate puppets.
“Death of a Unicorn” is being billed as a horror-comedy. I’d say the humor aspect is being exaggerated. (Although Carrigan’s butler and Poulter’s over-the-top son characters have their moments.)
The film features some originality with the mythical beast angle, and has some good acting, but it still hovers in the B-movie category. I suggest saving your money and checking this out when it hits the streaming services.
