SXSW Review: ‘Death of a Unicorn’ is a Bloody Gruesome Good Time

People often earn the fates they deserve. That’s not always the case, and bad things do still happen to good people. But in the most entertaining kind of cinema, those who don’t realize that they’re the villains often die first and most violently, and that’s absolutely what happens in A24’s latest film, Death of a Unicorn. On its face, it’s pure popcorn entertainment, but it also offers plenty to chew on about how doing the right thing even in the worst of circumstances may actually lead to redemption – while the reverse is also completely true.

This film opens Elliot (Paul Rudd) driving with his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) following a long-delayed taxi to the gate at a small airport to a faraway location in the beautiful mountains. Stressed that they’re late, Elliot speeds up and doesn’t see an animal dart into the road. As they exit the car, they realize that it’s likely a unicorn, and just after Ridley has a transporting experience touching its glowing horn, Elliot bludgeons it to make sure it’s fully dead. Their arrival to the home of Odell (Richard E. Grant), his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), and their son Shepard (Will Poulter) is tainted by this grisly beginning, and things get considerably more interesting – and destructive – once the unicorn turns out to be still alive and is seen as a critical resource to be studied and exploited by Elliot and Ridley’s greedy hosts.

This film has a wild premise and dives fully into it, with Ridley as the logical one who wants to learn about the lore of unicorns and to understand how they’ve been historically perceived in a way that has translated to their stories being adopted only as legends. Elliot wastes no time in conceiving of a way to benefit himself, since the news that Elliot and Ridley have had minor health conditions healed by contact with the unicorn’s horn gives him selfish hope that he might be able to treat the aggressive cancer he’s facing. It should surprise no one walking into this A24 movie that messing with nature is never a good idea, and consequences will surely follow for actions that seek to disrupt and profit from it.

Morality plays into this film, which is at its heart a comedy about the interactions of two very different classes of people. Ridley is an art student and immediately tries to commune with the animal, while Elliot, seeking only to please his extremely wealthy prospective business partners, wants an easy solution so that he doesn’t create problems that could jeopardize the deal he wants to close. Odell is unapologetically villainous, while the philanthropic Belinda would like to think that she’s a better person than she is. Shepard, who wears numerous pairs of shorts throughout the film, is desperate for his parents’ attention and approval but has so little in the way of actual skill or intelligence.

Writer-director Alex Scharfman’s feature debut is a triumphant success that truly knows its audience and delivers constant entertainment from start to finish. Every role in the ensemble is perfectly cast, but there’s no doubt that Poulter is the MVP, fully fleshing out his character’s absurdity and firing off numerous nonsensical quips with the utmost confidence. The supporting parts are also well-considered, namely Anthony Carrigan and Sunita Mani as employees of Odell’s family who are treated as less than human but still work hard to serve them. This film contains a tremendous amount of gore but it all feels completely necessary and appropriate, a superb payoff from a fantastic script filled with pointed and funny dialogue. It really is fun to watch these doomed people succumb to bloody deaths in this laugh riot of a monster movie.

Movie Rating: 8/10