Death of a Unicorn
Shoddy CGI and insufferable characters conspire to undermine this heavy-handed farce.
Mythfire
Image courtesy of Entertainment Film Dists.
Really? It’s hard to know what the writer-director Alex Scharfman was intending with his debut feature. It feels like a spoof of sorts, a farce with a gallery of wide-eyed reaction shots, a lot of running around and a stable of pantomime horses with horns glued to their foreheads. Are we expected to guffaw? To cower in a cold sweat of gratifying dread? If there’s any laughter in the stalls, it will be directed at the film rather than with it. Sadly, the joke would appear to be at the expense of Alex Scharfman.
The first ten minutes are not bad. A father and daughter are on a plane to the Pacific Northwest and their flight has been delayed. The girl, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), falls asleep on the shoulder of Elliot (Paul Rudd), a moment that Elliot would seem to cherish. Then he drops a sheaf of his research papers in the aisle and not wishing to disturb his sleeping angel, he attempts to retrieve the papers with his foot. It’s a situation that feels entirely real, plausible enough to have been reenacted from a genuine recollected moment.
Unfortunately, it’s the only credible moment in the film. After that, Ridley bumps her head, wakes up and the strain between father and daughter quickly becomes apparent. Things are hardly improved when, in their rental car driving across mountainous woodland, Elliot runs over a unicorn. Ridley is horrified and when she clasps the horn of the dying animal she undergoes a mystical transformation – an experience short-lived when her father bludgeons the creature over the head with a tyre iron. But, to give him his due, he does heave the body of the animal into the back of his car.
Elliot is visiting the palatial retreat of a potential employer (Richard E. Grant) and is desperate to make a good impression. When the unicorn in the trunk of his car rises from the dead, he has some explaining to do and soon the lot of them are under siege from the unicorn’s incensed parents…
Only Jenna Ortega brings an element of sincerity and empathy to her part, saving the film from total calamity. The casting of Paul Rudd in the central role makes sense, though, considering his effortless charm and association with such comic fantasies as Ant-Man and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. But here his insensitive and unsympathetic single-parent works against the film’s more sentimental riffs. In fact, besides the butler (Anthony Carrigan), all the characters are obnoxious caricatures, with Will Poulter’s arrogant, spoiled wastrel proving particularly hard to stomach. The unicorns themselves, seemingly modelled on the dinosaurs from the Jurassic World franchise, are sloppily realised, being a combination of puppetry and low-rent CGI. There are nods to Alien and E.T., but such allusions will be largely wasted on the intended audience – whatever audience that may be.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Carrigan, Sunita Mani, Steve Park, Jessica Hynes.
Dir Alex Scharfman, Pro Lucas Joaquin, Tyler Campellone, Drew Houpt, Lars Knudsen, Alex Scharfman, Tim Headington and Theresa Steele Page, Ex Pro Ari Aster, Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, Screenplay Alex Scharfman, Ph Larry Fong, Pro Des Amy Williams, Ed Ron Dulin, Music Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco, Costumes Andrea Flesch, Sound Damian Volpe and Sean Garnhart.
Secret Engine/Monoceros Media/Square Peg/The Royal Budapest Film Co/Ley Line Entertainment-Entertainment Film Dists.
107 mins. USA/Hungary. 2025. US Rel: 28 March 2025. UK Rel: 4 April 2025. Cert. 15.
