Boy can a banger trailer do a lot. Death of a Unicorn uses that 2 minutes to set up a killer premise, with a version of unicorns pop culture doesn’t usually spend money or time on. If you, like me, are locked into what that trailer promises, then Death of a Unicorn is gonna work for you. If you’re more locked into the “A24 presents” in the title, well, maybe leave the unicorns be.
Lawyer Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are on their way to Odell Leopold’s (Richard E. Grant) estate. Odell, Elliot’s boss, is dying, and wants the Kitner clan to meet Odell’s wife Belinda (Tea Leoni) and son Shepard (Will Poulter) so he can determine if Elliot deserves to be the next heir/partner. Complications arise when Elliot accidentally hits a “cancerous horse creature with some sort of protrusion” on the road, killing it, and dumping it in his car. Well, “killing” is a strong word…
I suppose if your movie title is “Death of a Unicorn” you’re not exactly going for subtle. But there’s no shades at all in this one. If you believe Ridley, you’re gonna survive, if not, you’re rich, trying to profit off of unicorns, and therefore must die. All our 1 percenters are completely despicable and worst of all, don’t change even as the darkness closes in around them. You’d think seeing someone impaled by a unicorn horn would make you come to your senses, but alas it’s not meant to be with this one.
But frankly it doesn’t matter, because of how many laughs this movie delivers. We’re firmly tipped toward comedy in the “horror comedy” spectrum. Our unicorns are scary enough, but honestly they are more fun as punchlines to aholes meeting their demise. Every iteration of a unicorn death happens here, making us root for the next jerk to die sooner rather than later. In spite of the terrible story, the jokes are sneakily well written/improvised. Paul Rudd anchors the thing with his aw shucksiness bathed in icky corporate jargon: watching him trying to navigate the moral see saw is wonderfully stupid and eyeroll inducing if you’ve ever been on a Zoom meeting. Jenna Ortega gets the big zinger lines as everyone around here dances around saying the right thing. Richard E. Grant and Tea Leoni get the assignment and play the vapid self-absorbed Leopold’s with aplomb. But the standouts are Anthony Carrigan and Will Poulter. Carrigan finds his niche here as the one saying the funniest things under his breath; each time they zoom in on him my eyes would open excitedly waiting to hear the next quiet snipe. But Poulter is the MVP of Death of a Unicorn, finally finding his perfect place as an idiot douchebag insisting he isn’t. Watching his false bravado instantly turn to snively panic is never not funny here, in addition to incredible joke delivery and maybe the best fate in the movie.
I do find it a bit funny that Paul Rudd is cast in a movie about animals with health powers. I’m fairly certain Rudd is housing his own unicorn somewhere on his property, using its life force to keep himself young. Although, Paul, if this movie is any indication, this might not end up well for you. Maybe you should sell it to Patrick Mahomes so your Chiefs can keep winning Super Bowls.