Death Of A Unicorn Review: Great Actors Rescue A24 Horror-Comedy's Obvious Script

Remember that bit in "Cabin in the Woods" where one of the scientists really wishes the human sacrifices summoned the unicorn as their killer? First-time writer and director Alex Scharfman has now made that movie with "Death of a Unicorn" — and it's pretty fun. Not a great movie, but "horror-comedy where unicorns kill rich people" is the sort of high concept that guarantees some level of entertainment, and excellent casting helps compensate for its weaknesses on the screenplay level.

Though it bears a producer credit from Ari Aster, the filmmaker behind some of A24's darkest and most challenging films, "Death of a Unicorn" is clearly part of a push from A24 to make more commercial mainstream movies. While still technically an indie (it got a SAG-AFTRA waiver during the strike as such), its sensibility isn't playing to the arthouse but rather trying to fill the void of mid-budget original genre fare the big studios used to make but just don't these days. Think the sort of movie that studios might have asked Tim Burton to make 30 years ago; Scharfman doesn't showcase the strong visual style of classic Burton, but it's telling that Burton's current favorite star Jenna Ortega is the lead here.

Ortega plays Ridley Kinter, a sensitive teenager mourning the death of her mom while her insensitive lawyer dad Elliot (Paul Rudd) drags her along with him for a meeting with the Leopold family, his biotech billionaire bosses. On the drive to the Leopolds' mansion, Elliot accidentally hits a unicorn with his rental car ... and then intentionally puts it out of its misery. The Kinters initially try to hide the creature's body from their hosts, but it soon becomes clear that unicorn blood and horn shavings have miraculous healing properties, doing everything from cleaning up Ridley's acne to curing Odell Leopold's (Richard E. Grant) cancer. The Leopolds are ready to make a fortune off this discovery, but Ridley, a prospective art history major who knows the actual mythology behind unicorns, is certain they're messing with forces they shouldn't.

"Death of a Unicorn" is yet another entry in the recent trend of movies making fun of rich people, and it doesn't particularly stand out from the crowd. Asking for class satire as sharp as "Parasite" might be a big ask of a silly popcorn movie, but we're not even talking the up-to-the-minute cleverness of the "Knives Out" movies or the satisfyingly ironic punishments of "The Menu." At least it isn't boring like "Triangle of Sadness" or accidentally reactionary like "Saltburn," but it's going to be a footnote at best when students write their theses on this movement in pop culture. If anything about it stands out, it's that the rich jerks in question are specifically Big Pharma (though the film only briefly alludes to the issue of healthcare disparities). Alongside the Adult Swim series "Common Side Effects," not to mention the cultural fascination with Luigi Mangione across the political spectrum, I wonder if Big Pharma might become Hollywood's new go-to villain.

Unexceptional as the satire is, the actors still wring some laughs out of it. Téa Leoni finds the humor in Belinda Leopold's performative charitability masking utter carelessness (she doesn't know if her foundation's "evacuating" migrants or "vaccinating" them). Will Poulter's a hoot as crypto bro Shepard Leopold, who's stealing unicorn parts for himself as recreational drugs. It goes without saying that Richard E. Grant is great as Odell Leopold; dude's great even in bad movies (see: "Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker"). The characters surrounding the family are also well cast. Sunita Mani plays the scientist Dr. Bhatia as the most genuinely disturbed by the ensuing carnage, so you feel bad for her even though she's scummy in her own way. The most impressive scene-stealer is Anthony Carrigan as the butler Griff, a character who has almost nothing to do, yet Carrigan makes every single line of his count.

For the scenes where the unicorns get their gory revenge on the humans, "Death of a Unicorn" borrows liberally from "Jurassic Park." There's the T-Rex approaching the car scene ... with a unicorn! There's the hiding from the raptors scene ... also with a unicorn! Alex Scharfman isn't Steven Spielberg, but he stages the action effectively (how refreshing it is watch so many nighttime scenes where you can actually see what's happening), and adds enough distinctive flourishes that it stays firmly on the side of "homage" rather than "rip-off." "Jurassic Park" might have also influenced the story's big theme of not messing with Mother Nature, though dealing with the more realistic threat of humans killing endangered species rather than resurrecting extinct ones.

The delivery of its big themes is where the screenplay falters the most. When it has a point to make, it makes it repeatedly; when something's about to happen, it telegraphs it so hard that there's almost no surprises in store. Ridley looks up the story behind The Unicorn Tapestries, then tells the story to everyone else while directly stating the themes, then watches it play out in front of her (side note: it gives me some hope that all the explanations here for why you shouldn't hunt unicorns draw from actual mythology and not from "Harry Potter," which absolutely would have been the touchpoint a decade ago). She repeatedly nags her dad about him not remembering their trip to see the Tapestries at the Cloisters with her mom, an obvious signpost of their emotional conflict but not really effective dramatization — the father-daughter conflict is by far the weakest and most forced part of the story. Jenna Ortega's acting and the musical score by Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco have to do all the heavy lifting to give the extremely predictable climax any emotional impact at all.

"Death of a Unicorn" is a fine choice for a discount matinee, or as one of your weekly movie options if you have A-List or another theater subscription service, but is by no means a must-see. Despite its R-rated violence, I think it might actually play best among teenage viewers. The obvious bits won't feel as stale to them, and I just know the ending is guaranteed to fill young horse girls with glee — at least until the literal last-second punchline, which might give them glee of a different sort.

"Death of a Unicorn" opens in theaters on March 28.