Written and Directed Alex Scharfman | 107 min | ▲▲ | VOD
I really admire the American upstart film studio A24 for investing in talented filmmakers and letting them take big swings. They’ve done it again here with Alex Scharfman, but the end result is a swing and miss — and that’s what sometimes will happen. Their success rate is well over .500, so I’ll take an occasional Death of a Unicorn for a semi-regular Everything Everywhere All At Once.
The premise has promise: Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega are Elliot and Ridley, a father and daughter mostly estranged since the cancer death of Elliot’s wife and Ridley’s mother. They’re off to spend a little time at a remote lodge up in the mountains — giving The Shining vibes — home of the wildly rich Leopolds who’ve made their fortune from pharmaceuticals.
The patriarch, Odell (Richard E Grant), is on death’s door, and Elliot is the family lawyer. He’s present to get the family to sign a few papers and secure a future with them. Also present is Odell’s wife, Belinda (Téa Leoni), son Shepard (Will Poulter), a couple of pharmaceutical scientists (Sunita Mani and Steve Park) and lodge staff (Jessica Hynes and Anthony Carrigan).
If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know Elliot and Ridley hit a juvenile unicorn on the drive up. Ridley touches the horn and has a psychedelic experience, which convinces her she’s connected to the animal. Certain it’s dead they put it in the back of their rented SUV, but it’s not dead, not by a long shot. The Leopolds are keen to exploit this opportunity when they discover unicorn horn has almost supernatural healing capabilities. What they aren’t aware of, at first, are the other magical beasties out in the night keen on rescuing their little one.
Where these creatures come from and how it is they’ve never been discovered in this area before is not something this movie is interested in. It’s too busy trying to keep us engaged in the relationship between a father and daughter, a satire on the cluelessness of the wealthy, and a comedy horror, but not doing any of this well.
The issues between Ridley and Elliot crop up from time to time, but not often enough to engage the emotions. The satire has occasional teeth thanks to the performances, but the targets are too easy and the script lets them down — the laughs here are rarer than single-horned magical horses. And while we get occasional gore, it turns out ferocious unicorns aren’t scary, especially when they’re made out of abysmal CGI.
More unfortunate is that this has some real ideas, but it lacks the conviction to really make us feel uncomfortable. The Leopolds are a terrible family, but not weird or threatening enough for us to care. In moments the fantastic Richard E channels the freaky energy of a couple of his great past roles — Darwin Mayflower from Hudson Hawk and Mark Bagley from How To Get Ahead In Advertising — but this movie strands him, as it does most of this talented cast.
