I remember when I saw the trailer for Death of a Unicorn for the first time. It was bizarre, but also an A24 movie, so that isn’t much of a surprise. The cast was mighty impressive, led by Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd with supporting turns from the likes of Richard E Grant, Tea Leoni, and Will Poulter. The premise–that a wealthy family that runs a pharmaceutical company gets their hands on a dead unicorn that offers the possibility of all kinds of profit–is promising. And, again, it’s A24. It’s gonna be weird.
The real question is whether or not its weird enough.
Attorney Elliot Kinter (Rudd) is on his way to the large estate of the Leopold family, tucked away in the center of their own personal wildlife refuge. Reluctantly along for the ride is his 19 year old daughter Ridley (Ortega), the pair being somewhat distant since the death of Ridley’s mother. Elliot is working on a deal where he will basically take over the Leopold family company as the elderly Odell (Grant) is dying of cancer. His wife Belinda (Leoni) and son Shepard (Poulter) are also there, wrapped up in their own things, and Elliot would be effectively running the company so they could continue to do those things. There’s just one small problem: en route along their private roadway through the woods, Elliot runs over a unicorn.
That leads to problems besides the obvious one of seemingly killing a mythological creature, it turns out that the unicorn’s mythological healing abilities, even if it is dead, is something that might be of great interest to a super-rich family that made a lot of its fortunes on medication. If the shavings of the unicorn’s horn can cure Ridley’s acne and Elliot’s allergies, can it cure cancer? And can they make more? And what happens when it turns out the dead unicorn wasn’t as unique as they might have initially assumed? For the last one, there’s a couple angry unicorns coming, darker in color, and they have fangs to begin with. Will anyone survive the night?
I went into Death of a Unicorn expecting something weird, and it was weird, but it also somehow felt uneven. Rudd is his usual charming self even as Elliot struggles to do the right thing by himself, by Ridley, and by the company, and not always in that order. Ortega, likewise, has the gloomy young woman thing down. But despite their acting chops, Leoni, Poulter, and even Grant seem to be going a bit over-the-top compared to Rudd and Ortega, and the script seems to be playing off the obvious stereotypes of the callous rich person’s stereotype. Should I be surprised when one of them tries snorting powdered unicorn horn? Not really, no. There are smaller turns from the likes of the generally reliable Anthony Carrigan and Jessica Hynes, but neither is given much to do, and of the two, Carrigan is the only one to manage to get much from what little he got.
And that is essentially what Death of a Unicorn ends up being: it’s not much beyond the weird premise. It feels rather rote despite not being rote in its premise at all. Hollywood isn’t above doing these vaguely anti-capitalist movies and shows, or as much as a big studio will make anything anti-capitalist, but it takes something really different like The Menu to really make something of an impact. What is so different about Death of a Unicorn? That billionaires will do outrageous, self-centered things for the sake of profit, even if it feels so very, very wrong? I think I’ve seen that before, and for something like Death iof a Unicorn, I really don’t want that feeling.
Grade: C
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