DEATH OF A UNICORN sounds like a great title and one right up A24’s alley. In a nutshell, it goes like this – a father and daughter accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties. But you have to know that there have got to be several layers to all this, right?
Come on, a unicorn has always been seen as a mythical, magical, ethereal, and cryptic creature; some of them even have wings, and some can only be touched by a virgin. Hell, some are even a shade of pink. Oooooh. Because they are so rare, skittish, and special, there are bound to be ramifications for killing one. Exactly what the retribution for such an action can be is open for interpretation, but in this 107-minute movie, the result looks to be a bit horrific.
Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are travelling in the Canadian Rockies for a weekend at the estate of Elliot’s boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), and his family – his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and son Shepard (Will Poulter) Hey, Noho Hank is also there, or rather Anthony Carrigan of BARRY fame, as the butler. Anyway, on the way, Elliot accidentally strikes and injures a small unicorn with his car. When Ridley touches its horn, she experiences strange, cosmic visions, which Elliot abruptly stops by bludgeoning the creature with a tire iron, splashing blood on them both. Not good, I’m sure.
When scientists Dr. Song (Stephen Park) and Dr. Bhatia (Sunita Mani) are called in to examine the body, especially the horn, miraculous cures of acne, poor eyesight, and even cancer manifest, and so does something else that is quite angered by the unicorn’s situation & exploitation. The unicorn’s alive, and Ripley strives to make things right. Hey, she must be ‘pure of heart’, right? The film is written and directed by Alex Scharfman in his directorial debut. But is the work played for satire or horror? Is there a moral or ethical tale about the treatment of fauna, mythical or otherwise?
The film made its HBO channel debut on SATURDAY, JULY 26, at 8:00 pm ET and on HBO Max the night prior. Audiences liked it more than the critics as RT illustrates.
