Death of a Unicorn: review of the film starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega
Alex Scharfman's first film, produced by A24 and starring Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni and Will Poulter, hits theaters on April 10, distributed by I Wonder Pictures
A grotesque fantasy tale, a black comedy about family dynamics, a social satire with horror overtones that tells the story of the conflictual relationship between man and nature and the even more conflictual dynamics between classes; Death of a Unicorn is an experiment that is partly successful and partly sinful for its low pretensions, driven by the inexperience of its director Alex Scharfman who, after having produced several films, including Let's Blow the Man Down and House of Spoils, decided to give life to his first work, written and directed by him and accompanied by the photography of Larry Fong (Damsel, The Predator)
and the soundtrack that, initially, seemed to be destined for the composition of John Carpenter but, subsequently, was entrusted to Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco (Genie, Woman of the Hour). Produced by A24, the film features a cast full of famous faces, from the protagonists Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega to the secondary ones Richard E. Grant (Saltburn, The Lesson), Téa Leoni (Madam Secretary, The Scent of Success) and Will Poutler (Black Mirror, Maze Runner).
Death of a Unicorn: An Unusual Business Trip
Lawyer Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are traveling to the wealthy country estate of his boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), a pharmaceutical magnate, who awaits them in the company of his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni) and his son Shepard (Will Poulter), as well as the inevitable servants.
Elliot, fearful and not very self-confident, thinks only of impressing his employer, while Ridley tries to discover the father he feels he never had and who is now forced to take action, given the premature death of his wife. Already behind schedule, father and daughter hit an animal along the road and, getting out to check on its condition, they soon realize they are in front of a unicorn.
Before Elliot strikes him with the intent of killing him and putting an end to his suffering, the girl touches the illuminated horn of the strange animal that first causes her particular visions and then shows inexplicable healing properties. The two finally arrive at the Leopold house with the unicorn still in the trunk, which, during the welcome meeting, wakes up, causing general panic.
A gunshot from the head of security, Shaw (Jessica Hynes), seems to finish him off, but it is here that the situation gets out of hand for the protagonists, generating a series of catastrophic consequences. Understanding the superhuman powers of the creature, Odell decides to start experiments to understand more, ignoring, like all the other inhabitants of the house, including her father Elliot, the warnings of the young Ridley, who, having studied the legends related to the figure of the unicorn, discovers many truths.
Death to overcome death
Death of a Unicorn is a journey of formation, a journey of reconciliation that starts from an original idea and then falls into a lot of rhetoric seasoned with some irreverent flashes of sarcasm, at times horrific. The protagonist Elliot focuses solely on work, because that is how he learned to be a father and take care of his family, but now he is forced to deal with death, which after having turned his life upside down reappears in a surreal form to bring him back to reality and to kick off Ridley's journey of acceptance; death to overcome death and to reconcile, or rather to find and discover himself as had never happened before.
And so, death is linked to nature, to man's confrontation with it and its exploitation with the sole and only purpose of bringing benefit to the human race, without caring in the slightest about the well-being of others. Man and animal, the human and the inhuman, which even in humanity itself finds its nemesis and its opposite, fighting over ideals that echo the most basic confrontation between classes, in which the rich is greedy and only aimed at profit and exploitation (of the animal as much as of the person), and the poor is subdued and then emerges for wit and reasoning.
Death of a Unicorn: evaluation and conclusion
Alex Scharfman carries out a double criticism and moves it in a sagacious way, ridiculing the rich landowner and the pharmaceutical industry that puts collective well-being in second place compared to corporate protection. The tone is sarcastic, it tries to entertain and, in some moments, it succeeds, but with the demerit of not deepening enough some traits of the characters on stage and of trivializing too much some dynamics that the big screen has already faced in every shape and size.
The originality lies in the departure, in the intuition of placing an iconic figure linked to a certain type of tradition, such as that of the unicorn, within a context already known but distant from it. But this is not enough and, even if Death of a Unicorn can boast higher positions of recognition than other films of the black-humorous genre and also counts on a very respectable cast, who knows how to dress this type of comedy well, the inexperience of its author, accompanied by a photography that is too simple and plasticized, certainly does not help the film to stand out for its value.