REVIEW:
It’s Death Becomes Her meets Cabin in the Woods, in this tale of wealth and horror. Death of a Unicorn is a fun, B movie. It might feature A list stars like Paul Rudd and Jenn Ortega, but the content here is B level, monster attack movie all the way. This is the story of a wealthy family that tries to use the powder from a unicorn horn to cure heart disease. Only to get this horn, they have to kill a unicorn, thus angering the parent unicorns. This triggers the second half of the movie, which is all about surviving unicorn attacks.
Remember in Cabin in the Woods, when we witnessed every monster and creature you could imagine, attacking characters in the hallways of a building? Well one of those creatures was a unicorn. And that was the first time it had ever been presented as a creature to be feared, like a monster. Well, Death of a Unicorn took that idea to the next level.
The first half of the movie is all about a wealthy family that lives in this mansion in a secluded woods. The family has a sickly, dying patriarch, and Paul Rudd plays the employee who they are considering for taking over the estate. He shows up with his daughter (Ortega,) who most definitely does not want to be there. The two of them run over the unicorn at the very start of the movie, before even arriving at the family house. Then they try to hide it from the family. Eventually the secret comes out and the family has scientists try to harvest the healing power of the horn. All of this is great. So is the way that the daughter studies the tapestries from the Cloisters Museum, in order to learn about the legends of unicorns.
The second half of the movie is where things don’t quite hold up. This is where the unicorns attack and this becomes a pretty standard monster movie. The unicorns go on a killing spree and it is all about the humans trying to survive. Instead of that, the second half of the movie should have explored how unicorns came to be there in the first place. For some reason an explanation or even wondering about the unicorns never happens. You would think maybe the family conjured something up, turning to dark magic or something in order to bring these creatures here to save the dying man with all the money in the world. Something like how in the movie Ready or Not the family was super wealthy, but only because they had made a deal with the devil, of sorts. But no such luck. No explanation, and no characters even asking questions. That’s where the movie really misses out. You need that peak behind the curtain, or twist or reveal. This movie is content to simply be a monster movie about unicorns. It’s fun to a certain point, but it could have been so much more.