With trepidation, I was looking forward to A24’s newest release, writer/director Alex Scharfman’s debut feature Death of a Unicorn. That trepidation is due to the film’s lukewarm reception out of this year’s SXSW film festival and the reports I’d heard from critics I trust and friends who had seen it. I was surprised to find that despite some aspects that work more strongly than others, Death of a Unicorn is a mostly effective horror/comedy romp that leans fully into the inherent weirdness of this premise effectively. 

Elliot (Paul Rudd) picks his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) up from college, to spend a weekend at the countryside estate of his terminally ill boss (Richard E. Grant) and his wife and son (Téa Leoni, Will Poulter), where he is presenting something that could lead to a promotion. On the way there, they hit a mysterious creature with their car, and they pack it up into the trunk of their rental car. Once they get to the house, strange things begin to happen. Elliot no longer needs his glasses, and Ridley’s acne goes away. She feels an energy coming from their parked car. The creature has recovered itself, and it becomes clear to Ridley and the terrible people who employ her father that they’ve hit an actual unicorn. The wealth-obsessed Leopold family decide they want to chop up the animal and use its magical properties for their own selfish benefits. And the unicorn’s parents show up, and they’re not happy.

There is nothing about Death of a Unicorn that suggests that it should work. This cast is a bit too starry for the usual A24 joint, and it kind of reeks of that thing where a filmmaker has thrown a bunch of big names into a room and hopes for the best. But Scharfman’s script is actually pretty sharp and gives all of its well-known actors pretty solid material to work with. I’m curious how long star Jenna Ortega can play rebellious teenagers, but she’s still pulling it off effectively so I’ll allow it. She’s doing a riff on the ‘chosen one’ character arc, as the only person here who connects with the unicorn, or the only one who might actually be a decent person here, and kind of serves as the audience conduit into this world of opportunistic, evil wealthy villains. And Ortega has proven herself as a capable anchor for this kind of thing before, and she continues to impress. 

Paul Rudd is doing a good job here as well, because we never quite know where we stand with him. We’re never sure if he’s a decent person because there’s a reason his relationship with his daughter is strained and we learn more about that as the story goes on, and we aren’t sure if he’s going to side with his employers, the villains, or his daughter, who’s the only person in this movie with any sense. He kind of goes back and forth between being someone who’s looking for redemption and someone who could be just as bad as everyone else, and Rudd finds a nice balance of the two potential perceptions of his character and he keeps us on our toes rather effectively.

Richard E. Grant feels like he stepped off the set of Saltburn and walked across the street to this set. There are lots of thematic similarities between the central family of that film and the one here, and I guess this falls into the ‘eat the rich’ trend of horror/comedy films we’ve been seeing lately. Téa Leoni is fun here, and Will Poulter is having a blast playing the classic spoiled rich kid who has been raised his whole life to think every idea that comes into his head is brilliant, and that he’s always right. And the way all of these characters’ obscene wealth and privilege comes back to bite them in the end, can be very satisfying to the viewer in a time and place in society where wealth disparity is at a high. There’s something that’s almost therapeutic about when the evil rich people in a movie get what they have coming to them. If only things shook out this way in real life!

The social satire here and the commentary about class is absolutely not subtle and I could see people viewing this as rather heavy-handed and banging you over the head with its message. But I honestly didn’t mind, I think we don’t need subtlety in everything and again, in the world where this film finds us, I think anti-subtlety can be an argument in the film’s favor. I don’t love the film’s ultimate ending because there’s an element of ambiguity here and that kind of feels like lazy writing. But for a debut feature, it shows promise for this filmmaker and suggests he might stick the landing a bit better next time.

If I were looking for negatives here, I would say the heavy-handedness of the message might be too much for some viewers. Again, it wasn’t too much for me, and I think the bluntness of this film’s message is the point and it might have been a mistake to go for something more nuanced or morally gray. Also, the visual effects and the creature effects kind of look like crap some of the time, but considering this was made on a budget of $15 million, I think it’s altogether pretty impressive. It might have been better to do more practical creature effects, rather than CGI, but I’m not sure how the filmmaker would accomplish that. But one thing I cannot say as a strike against this movie is that it never feels like it’s sidelining any actor. Everyone here has fun material to work with and each actor is contributing something essential. 

So, overall, I had a better than expected time with Alex Scharfman’s Death of a Unicorn. I won’t say this feels like the birth of a truly exciting filmmaker, because there are some rough edges here and some elements that  might not always work. But I left the film in a better mood than I anticipated. It’s effectively gonzo and bizarre, frequently quite funny and always well-performed and as an addition to the ‘eat the rich’ horror/comedy subgenre, it feels like it’s worth the viewer’s time. I will say there’s nothing quite like this at the multiplex right now, and there’s enough that’s memorable about this whole endeavor, and you’ll want to talk about it afterwards and discuss what it all meant. So, I think that’s enough for a recommendation, especially in a time of year where pickings are slim at the movies. Death of a Unicorn is a scathing and sharp satire that may miss the mark occasionally, but is certainly a better time than expected.