Alex Scharfman’s debut feature Death of a Unicorn riffs on three main themes: a satire about the venality of the ultra-rich, a hyper-violent creature feature, and a Spielbergian fractured and healed parent-child story. The first two work together smoothly and at times hilariously, it’s regrettable that the third essentially goes nowhere yet it is the movie’s framework.
Paul Rudd plays Elliot, a corporate lawyer in charge of Ethics and Compliance for the Leopold family’s pharmaceutical empire. Summoned to their vast estate in Canada, so vast that it is a wildlife reserve, Elliot has asked his college aged daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) to accompany him to prove that he values family. Ridley and Elliot haven’t been close since the death of Ridley’s mother from cancer. She’s willing to go on the trip with her dad as it is the best she’s going to get from the workaholic, but the resentment with his absence is palpable.
The Leopolds are the kind of wealthy most people rarely encounter. The fact that they own a significant amount of the beautiful mountain areas of Alberta isn’t lost on Ridley. Nor is Elliot’s anxiety-led hyperfocus on keeping the family happy ensuring he will get a board seat as he handles the dying patriarch Odell Leopold’s (Richard E. Grant) legacy trust transferring it to his professional charity wife and NGO matron Belinda (Téa Leoni) and his wastrel and idiotic son Shephard (Will Poulter). So distracted by the demands of Odell that he’s speeding along the mountain road to their mansion, Elliot hits a “horse.” A horse with a horn and iridescent purple blood. Did Elliot just run down a unicorn?
Ridley is devastated by the accident and wants to do whatever she can to save the dying creature whose horn glows and invites her to hold it to experience something inexplicable and mystical. Elliot is worried about the car insurance, running even later than expected, and leaving a discoverable mess. He grabs a tyre iron and “mercy kills” the creature loading its carcass into their rental.
Elliot and Ridley have made the error of delivering a mythical and mystical creature, replete with healing and regeneration powers, into the hands of people who see everything; land, humans, animals, and cultures as exploitable resources to increase their wealth. In this case they might have brought with them the secret of everlasting life to a family whose existence is a blight on humanity no matter what excuses Elliot gives for their grotesque greed. There are a few kinks in the Leopold’s plans to exploit the magical creature. First, as scientists Dr. Song (Steve Park) and Dr. Bhatai (Sunita Mani) discover – there’s no way to artificially replicate the healing powers of the unicorn which has erased Odell’s cancer. Second, the unicorn is the foal of two larger and very pissed off unicorns who, as illustrated in the medieval tapestries La Chasse à la licorne, will gore and tear out the organs of those who try to trap them.
Alex Scharfman’s premise and set up shows a lot of promise. The comedic absurdity of the Leopolds and their wanton greed and ability to use their money to ensure compliancy from all around them gets some decent laughs, especially in the form of their long-suffering “butler” Griff (Anthony Carrigan) and Shepard’s clearly useless scion. Téa Leoni’s Belinda is particularly vile as the charity-washing sociopath who genuinely finds dealing with poor people repulsive. Richard E. Grant doesn’t have to stretch himself as an actor to play the monomaniacal Odell who goes from Buddhist prayer bead wearing to assault rifle toting in a matter of hours. When the film reaches its second act where the older unicorns run rampage through the property, the goring gore is at full bore and quite funny. However, the movie soon runs out of steam when it tries to include some measure of sincerity in an otherwise amusing blood bath.
Alex Scharfman’s intentions become muddled when he focuses upon Rudd and Ortega’s relationship. Neither Elliot nor Ridley are interesting enough to be the primary protagonists and the misplaced earnest examination of grief and guilt between father and daughter is not only surplus to the narrative, but also cloyingly out of character with the exaggerated chaos of a splatter creature feature where (most) of the targets are getting their just desserts.
Death of a Unicorn for the most part looks incredible. The production design, creature design, and general visual flair is a promising calling card for Scharfman’s future projects. If he had been less interested in making a partial throwback to E.T. and Jurassic Park both in obviously cribbed scene references and emotional beats and stuck to an all out bonkers, “Unicorns will mess you up” format, he might have had the lean and mean movie that would have kept people engaged.
Death of a Unicorn isn’t an abject failure, but it is a movie where it is clear where things went wrong preventing it from being sharply honed. It might well be worth the ticket price for Will Poulter and Anthony Carrigan’s performances alone. The film feels much longer than its 1 hour and 48 minutes and wears out the good will it builds in one scene and squanders in the next. Better to be proudly Tremors or Slither than a washed-out Jurassic Park.
Director: Alex Scharfman
Cast: Jenna Ortega, Paul Rudd, Will Poulter
Writer: Alex Scharfman
Producers: Tyler Campellone, Tim Headington, Drew Houpt, Lucas Joaquin, Lars Knudsen, Theresa Steele Page, Alex Scharfman
Music: Giosuè Greco, Dan Romer
Cinematography: Larry Fong
Editor: Ron Dulin
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