Movie Review: Death of a Unicorn

It’s always a pleasant surprise when I come across a movie that feels like it was made specifically to my tastes, and Death of a Unicorn turned out to be just that. Making his feature debut, writer and director Alex Scharfman almost perfectly blends comedy with horror, the serious with the ridiculous, and pure camp with deeper meaning to make the year’s first truly unforgettable wide release film.

Odell (Richard E. Grant), the owner of a major pharmaceutical company, is dying of cancer. He has ostensibly chosen Elliot (Paul Rudd) to take over for him, a job that would require him to interface with his heirs, wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and son Shepard (Will Poulter). As such, before he can finalize the transition, he wants to spend time getting to know Elliot’s family, which since the death of his wife solely consists of daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega). She is less than thrilled about being forced to tag along and put on a show for her dad’s boss at his sprawling Alaskan estate but reluctantly agrees to play nice anyway.

Driving his rental car to the estate, Elliot accidentally hits an animal. When he and Ridley see that it appears to be a unicorn they are understandably stunned, but seeing that it is still alive and suffering he puts it out of its misery and, fearing that he might get in trouble for killing a rare species, loads it into the trunk. At his boss’ home, Ridley is still visibly shaken from the experience, but Elliot continues to try and make a good impression. Unfortunately for that plan, the unicorn turns out to still be alive and begins to loudly tear up the inside of the SUV. Everyone goes out to the driveway to see what’s going on when the creature bursts out of a window and is promptly put down (again) by their security.

When they notice that coming into contact with the unicorn’s blood seems to have cured Ridley’s acne and Elliot’s allergies Odell immediately calls in a small group of staff to analyze it. The scientists agree that it does seem to have incredible curative properties and so he tries it on himself. When it almost instantaneously cures his cancer he immediately realizes that it’s a miraculous and very lucrative discovery. But it turns out there’s more than one unicorn in the Alaskan wilderness, they aren’t happy about what’s been going on, and they are out to extract bloody revenge.

The movie takes its ludicrous premise just seriously enough to get the audience to buy into it while still knowingly laughing along at its own absurdity. The cast all earnestly play their parts, fully committing to the material at each increasingly strange turn. Grant, Leoni, and Poulter offer up spot-on spoofs of the affectations of the ultra-rich while Rudd and Ortega excel as the emotional core of the film and get some surprisingly moving moments.

The script isn’t exactly subtle about its messaging, but that doesn’t detract from its effectiveness or the audience’s overall enjoyment of the movie. The comedic moments are used smartly to put the audience at ease and the horror moments are well-handled, deploying classic genre tropes and vicious deaths to ramp up the suspense. The CGI is sometimes less than impressive and there is some dabbling with spirituality that some may find hokey (it worked for me), but overall, this is one of the most purely entertaining movies of the year. ★★★★½