‘Death of a Unicorn’: too much mish-mashing of themes, not enough originality – and there really ought to have been

We’ve been witnessing a lot of sub-genres and crossover formatting in cinema of late. I was watching Anora just the other night and I wasn’t quite sure if all the fast-talk one-liners were suitable for a film that featured so much violence (some of it gratuitous) and such sensitive topics as rape. But, hey, who wants to see a heavy film for two hours straight when there can be some humour weaved in for full audience crossover measure?

Similarly, when I saw Death of a Unicorn, I wasn’t sure if I should be laughing or holding back tears with some scenes. It’s kind of horror meets satire to the point where one of its key characters, Ridley (played by Jenna Ortega) is practically laughed at in her eco-consciousness.

The film also stars Paul Rudd as Elliot Kintner, a widowed lawyer who is driving to see a client who lives in a forest, with his daughter Ridley in the passenger seat for company. On their journey they hit an animal on the road – only it’s no ordinary animal, but a unicorn. While Ridley is fascinated by this creature (and who wouldn’t be?), her father treats the situation like any other roadkill incident.

They eventually get to the client’s home, with the animal supposedly dead at the back of their vehicle. Only it’s not dead and starts to kick up a fuss – literally – and this is when the real drama starts. The client family are immediately alerted to this magical creature in the back of their car, and quickly plot to cut it up for its quickly-realised healing properties.

Again, like Elliot, none of the adults appear to be aghast – not even at first – at the fact that they are looking at an actual unicorn here.

What it does is posit the Ortega character and the others into a Gen Z vs Gen X, us-and-them kind of scenario, where Z is pretty much laughed off and X is presented as purely ironic and always up for making the most out of dark times and sinister circumstances.

There’s a kind of White Lotus vibe to the entire proceedings, actually, and this only adds to the absurdity of it all. Posh folk suddenly having to deal with pedestrian issues. Environment sacrificed for luxury and decadence. And so on. There’s even a hint of Schitt’s Creek in there, and if producers tried any harder to fit one of its support characters, Will Poulter as a rich spoilt young heir, into ill-fitting label-laden monochrome wardrobe, I wouldn’t be the only one to spot the comparisons to Schitt’s ‘David’.

So… originality is not very present in this picture – and it really ought to have been. It’s not really for kids, not really for adults, and not really something that had to be made. And for a cross-genre experiment, I think the scientists of Hollywood might have to go back to the lab and start afresh.

Antonino Tati

‘Death of a Unicorn’ is in cinemas.