Welcome to the perfectly serviceable, if not somewhat underwhelming dark comedy/horror film released by historically much more adventurous indie cinema darling A24. For the past decade, A24 has built an almost cult like following, due largely in part to their perfectly curated brand of challenging and decidedly unique offerings. While Hollywood was serving up an endless franchise buffet of sequels, soft reboots and big budget superhero sagas, A24 countered with lower budget, auteur driven projects, made from scratch with no built in Intellectual Property brand extensions. With critically acclaimed ventures like The Safdie Brother’s Uncut Gems or Robert Eggers’ The Witch, A24 established a reputation as a boutique label for the serious and often experimental film; in a sense, the auteur directors themselves became their own franchises. The A24 logo on a new trailer instantly stamped the film with a certain air of assumed quality.
Flash to 2023. Aa new strategy seemed to have emerged, spearheaded by their new acquisition executive Noah Sacco. Sacco made the rounds to all the major the talent agencies in search of new “action and big IP projects,” making it clear that to keep the brand growing, A24 was now “deemphasizing the traditional character/auteur driven dramas.” This intentional swerve from their highly valued, carefully crafted niche (but ultimately financially limited) is notable, as much good will as been built up over the years for the A24 brand and it’s presumed quality.
It seems Death of a Unicorn is the first wave of the incoming tide for A24, a broader swing than anything they’ve done prior and no doubt a taste of things to come. The film is an enjoyable ride, but deeply familiar and frankly just done better by the obvious inspirations it’s cribbed from. It styles itself as dark satire of the elite class (think Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game if it’s DNA was crossed with Jurassic Park), where in the cartoonish hubris of the ultra-wealthy class sentences them each to a grisly, CGI death as atonement for their selfish desire to personally benefit from controlling the natural world.
The story begins with a familiar set up: father (Paul Rudd) and daughter (Jenna Ortega) are emotionally distant due to the death of the mother (a few years?) earlier. Paul Rudd plays Elliot, a charmingly detached and weak lawyer with the best of intentions while Ortega plays a stereotype teen raging in angst who will obviously be our moral center. On their awkward drive to the secluded mansion of the billionaire-pharmaceutical-family-compound he’s employed by, Rudd accidently hits something with his car. Turns out it’s a unicorn. Ortega is immediately sympathetic and touches the dying animal’s uni-horn. This somehow magically connects her both to the animal’s spirt and takes her on a psychedelic trip to the swirling cosmic beyond. This is immediately interrupted by Rudd smashing the animal out of its misery with a tire iron. Yes, it’s that kind of comedy. For whatever reason, they decide to put the seemingly dead unicorn into the back of their rental SUV and arrive at the compound to meet the obnoxiously stereotypical, ultra wealthy, out of touch pharma-family that they will spend the weekend with as Paul tries to curry their favor, join their corporate board and be set for life in the ranks of the elite.
It’s around this point they both realize that the unicorn blood has magic healing powers: Ortega’s acne has cleared up and Rudd no longer needs glasses. It’s also around this point that the unicorn announces to everyone that it is, in fact, not actually dead. From there, things go about how you’d expect if you’ve seen Jurassic Park. You see, the cartoonish rich people want to keep the magic for themselves. The wealthy family, who up until now had put on a paper-thin mask of kindness and philanthropy, go on to treat the house staff, the scientists working for them and our two main characters as increasingly more disposable pawns while the situation escalates.
The action in the climax, while functional, lacks the specific flare and personality that would elevate the film above its reference points. First time feature filmmaker Alex Scharfman (who also wrote the screen play) does an acceptable job, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before (and done better elsewhere). And still, I would probably recommend the picture to most. Turns out there’s still schadenfreudian satisfaction in watching generic rich jerks get their just deserts in a world where that seems to be the stuff of fiction these days. | Joseph C. Roussin
