by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
When one of Hollywood’s hottest studios teams up with one of Hollywood’s hottest names, it’s worthy of attention. So Death of a Unicorn was always going to have my interest.
A bit of A24’s shine may have been stolen by Neon as of late, and they’ve had a few misses, but the fact remains A24’s built themselves into one of the more consistent studios going right now. Jenna Ortega, likewise, hasn’t necessarily been perfect with her choices since truly bursting onto the scene in 2022 (the sooner everyone forgets Miller’s Girl the better), but she’s still one of the most sought-after names in the business — and will be teaming up with A24 again later this year for Hurry Up Tomorrow.
While those facts alone would have gotten me interested, the horror-comedy premise of Death of a Unicorn also had me intrigued. We follow Ortega as the daughter of Elliot (Paul Rudd), a lawyer for an uber-rich pharmaceutical company who hit a unicorn with their car on the way to the meet up with his bosses and secure his future. Things get bloody when the family, terminally ill patriarch (Richard E. Grant), his wife (Téa Leoni), and their son (Will Poulter), attempt to harvest the unicorn after learning of its powers.
The reason this movie works for me is largely the performances, starting with Ortega. She’s certainly found her niche as the sort of rebellious young adult, and she plays that perfectly here. However, it’s not the deadpan of a Wednesday Addams — there’s an earnestness to her performance, spurred by the connection she makes with the unicorn they crash into on the road, which is much needed to avoid us completely rooting against all humans. In a cast of characters that are very hard to root for, we feel for her character as the one seemingly sane, empathetic island in a sea of narcissism. She’s as engaging and charismatic as ever.
On the other end of the spectrum, the trio of pharmaceutical entrepreneurs are equally perfect as the selfish trio at the head of this exorbitantly rich company, which allows them to host the father/daughter duo at their compound alongside ill-treated and underappreciated staff. There’s the slightest veneer of fake niceties that they put on, through their foundation and the donation of the land for the preserve where the compound is, but it’s the thinnest of thin. The way the family treats their staff and our protagonists, as well as their immediate drive to suck all of the profit they can out of the titular unicorn when they realize the benefits it offers, comes across as all too real. They’re each out of touch in their own way, and the biting satire is the strongest contribution from first-time feature film writer/director Alex Scharfman. What could come off as either cartoonish or too on the nose, in the current climate, feels more depressingly accurate. It only makes their comeuppance even more satisfying.
The rest of the compound staff play their roles well enough, but there’s one performance that doesn’t work for me, and that’s Paul Rudd. As a father and a lawyer looking to set up a nest egg for the daughter he’s emotionally neglected in pursuit of this, he’s technically probably doing what he’s supposed to do when he comes off tone deaf and frustrating. However, his seeming attempt to win World’s Worst Dad is just as annoying, and while that’s probably the point, it doesn’t mean I jived with it.
The issue had a cascading effect, too. While I was largely having fun watching our cast of largely unlikable characters find new and creative ways to be dispatched by our mythical creatures, when the movie tries to get me to buy into its emotional crescendo at the climax, it doesn’t really work. That lack of emotional investment isn’t the only reason the finale falls a little flat. While most of the creature work takes place in the dark (either outside or in), the sun-soaked final moments hinder things a bit — and not just because the film seemingly and confoundingly decides to pretend there’s no transition between the pitch-black of night and a bright, blue-skied morning.
Despite a slightly disappointing finale, I had so much fun with Ortega and our trio of rich, selfish, hateable buffoons that it was enough to power the whole movie to feeling like a win. The gnarly horn kills didn’t hurt either.
Rating: Liked It
Death of a Unicorn is currently playing in theaters
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