It’s the monster movie you never saw coming: Death of a Unicorn, which in an alternate world would be an indie drama about the fall of the utopian dream, or a takedown documentary about the rise and fall of a promising business, but is instead an on-the-horn horror-comedy in which Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega semi-accidentally kill a baby unicorn, setting off a chain of events that leads to its viscous parents ruthlessly butchering everyone in their path. Yes, that was all one sentence, grammar Nazis be damned.
A movie just funny enough to get away with its premise while not funny enough to be outright hilarious, Death of a Unicorn boasts gory deaths and an action-packed climax while deriving much of its entertainment value from the weird swirl of selfishly rich and rotten characters at its core. Rudd plays the charmingly awkward and well-intentioned (but ethically challenged) dad character to Jenna Ortega’s morally virtuous protagonist. But it’s Richard E. Grant and Tea Leoni’s slimy couple and their idiotically clever son, played with flamboyant gusto by Will Poulter, that really shine.
It’s all set up for a bloody finale full of CGI unicorns chasing the cast around, of course, impaling some while ripping others apart with their fangs (one dude gets his head hoof-crushed like a watermelon, the lucky bastard). The CGI isn’t bad considering the A24-sized budget and prominent usage of the creatures, though it is at its best when using practical effects or the unicorns aren’t on full display.
Mix it all together and you get an entertaining if uneven horror-comedy-thriller that doesn’t fully find its lane. It’s a fun viewing experience but not one that is funny enough, scary enough, or violent enough to garner a rewatch. Then again, it could just as easily become a cult classic, so what the unicorn horn do I know? It’s certainly not worth galloping to theaters over, but a steady trot would be sufficient.
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.
