By Jake Wilson
DEATH OF A UNICORN ★★★
(MA15+) 107 minutes
Take something innocent and familiar and give it a morbid twist. It’s a classic exploitation movie formula that still works: witness the current fad for gruesome reworkings of public-domain children’s classics, like the recent Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare.
Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega in a scene from Death of a Unicorn.Credit: AP
But Alex Scharfman’s first feature Death Of a Unicorn, brought to us by the upmarket indie distributor A24, is the good-taste version of an innately bad-taste idea.
To be sure, this isn’t a film for viewers with weak stomachs. Unicorn blood flows freely, and it’s hardly a spoiler to say that several characters wind up on the wrong end of those long pointy horns.
The gore is calibrated to be mildly shocking, but also amusing, even for viewers who aren’t hardened horror fans. It’s also just one component of a movie which is also something of a New Age parable, as well as the kind of satire on privilege that currently goes down well with the arthouse crowd.
Paul Rudd is at his most mild-mannered as Elliot, a buttoned-up lawyer in the pay of big pharma, specifically the uber-wealthy Leopold family, who invite him to join them for a weekend at their country estate.
From left, Tea Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Will Poulter and Paul Rudd in a scene from Death of a Unicorn.Credit: AP
Dragged along is his scowling teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega), a rebel who wears raccoon eye make-up and drops knowledge such as “philanthropy is reputation-laundering for the oligarchy”.
As they drive down a steep mountain road, their car hits a unicorn that winds up dead, or so it appears (in the long tradition of magic-realist “slick fantasy”, they’re startled by this, but not quite as startled as might be expected).
At first, Elliot is keen to keep the whole affair from coming to the attention of the Leopolds, whose mock-medieval mansion has the look of being purpose-built for Satanic ritual, and might well contain a dungeon or two.
But when it transpires that unicorn blood has the power to cure any ailment from acne to cancer, he seizes the chance to curry favour with his decrepit boss Dell (Richard E. Grant), as well as Dell’s conniving wife Belinda (Tea Leoni), and their seemingly empty-headed son Shepard (Will Poulter).
Soon they’re all debating how best to capitalise on their discovery, in the face of Ridley’s increasingly urgent warnings that there are things humanity shouldn’t meddle with, unicorns being one of them.
Granting that this kind of cautionary tale is predictable by design, there really isn’t enough story here to sustain a feature. Still, the waiting game is managed very professionally, with attractively simple widescreen framing courtesy of Zack Snyder’s regular cinematographer Larry Fong, and a range of amusingly caricatured villains.
Rudd is a bit miscast as a conformist bootlicker, but Ortega is one of the film’s main strengths, a small bundle of outrage who convincingly goes from comic petulance to sincere distress.
The other strength is the flexibility of the metaphor, which feels especially apt for the present moment. Unicorns could be taken to symbolise any number of things in the real world, and Ridley’s fury at the adults’ greed and cynicism would still seem justified.
Death of a Unicorn is in cinemas from today.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.