‘Death of a Unicorn’ Review: A Failed Commercial Attempt from A24
Despite a well-mounted cast and one of the best cinematographers working today contributing to the project, ALEX SCHARFMAN’S DEATH OF A UNICORN is yet another bad film from a studio that is in desperate need of reinvention.
In October 2023, reports revealed that A24, a studio primarily known for its independent, auteur-driven projects, was looking to branch out and expand its strategy to include more commercial, broad-appealing works alongside their smaller movies. Of course, none of this is a bad thing. To maintain its relevancy as a studio, it must adapt to the ever-shifting consumer trends and evolve in its ability to deliver one great project after the next. Whether or not A24 has exhausted its “elevated” brand remains to be seen (Opus was a disaster, while Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope remains their sole good film of the year as On Becoming a Guinea Fowl skipped Canada). However, unlike some A24 purists who believe the studio only needs to do one specific thing and keep at it, I think it’s well within its rights as a film distribution company to expand its offerings and start playing with popular cinema tropes.
Trying to plunge into populist entertainment is one thing – and more studios should offer a balance of auteur-driven, personal works and more crowd-pleasing fare that would likely finance the off-kilter projects A24 is best known for. Yet, I never thought their first legitimate commercial offering would continue the hallmarks that modern commercial endeavors are currently perpetuating: murky, lifeless visuals, cynical, quip-heavy humor, gotcha! moments, and a half-baked social commentary that thinks it’s smart to repeatedly bludgeon the audience over the head with the same insistent message but is actually saying nothing of interest. At least, this is what Alex Scharfman’s Death of a Unicorn offers to viewers who have been desperately waiting to see the independent film studio genuinely dip their toes in commercial entertainment, offering very little value for A24 to continue staying relevant ten years after its foundation.
I wish I had come up with this note-perfect summation, but alas, many critics have echoed the sentiment that Death of a Unicorn is basically “Eat the Rich” for babies. It’s the best way to describe such a horrendously unfunny and toothless affair that believes it has something of interest to say about the vulturous nature of rich people but, in turn, says nothing we don’t already know or at least doesn’t find compelling avenues to freshen up this message. As good as its well-mounted cast may be, the film itself is a dreary affair to sit through, both visually and thematically. It believes its benevolent intentions are enough to enthrall audiences with its over-the-top violence and sickly gore. Still, once someone goes past this “insane ride,” we quickly realize that this “biting” social critique severely lacks potent meaning.
We’ve already had a toothless “Eat the Rich” movie two years ago with Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, but at least this one knew how not to take itself seriously and have fun with its morbid setting and uncomfortable, squirm-inducing scenes. That’s why it was a mostly entertaining time. It also benefitted from some of the most staggering photography of Linus Sandgren’s career and a cast that was mostly game for enjoying a slight bit of debauchery. Surprisingly, it worked, at least for me, and may have a better reputation in the next few years than Fennell’s horrendous directorial debut.
For Death of a Unicorn, Scharfman has the lucky privilege to collaborate with some of the best actors working today, playing characters well within their comfort zones, and cinematographer Larry Fong, whose staggering body of work can be found in Zack Snyder’s 300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice – all great works of art that stimulate our senses through its eye-widening poetry and wondrously composed three-dimensionality, without the need for any stereoscopic glasses.
His post-Snyder efforts, such as The Tomorrow War, Kong: Skull Island, and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, contain enough visual flourishes from Fong to keep us enthralled, even if he works with lesser-than-great screenplays and limitations that prevent him from fully cooking. Yet, one can’t say the same with how Fong crafts his images in Death of a Unicorn, his first (and hopefully only) miss as a cinematographer. There isn’t a single shot you can extract from the movie that doesn’t look and feel artificial, an unfortunate trend plaguing most modern movies, recently defined by Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Edward Lachman as “mush.”
Even in the moments when Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), touch a unicorn’s horn and experience otherworldly visions with eye-popping results, the composition of the frame is so flat and lifeless that none of the explosions of colors grab our attention. That’s because, shockingly for Fong, there’s no depth of field – everything, from the front to the back, is compressed in the middle of the frame. It creates the “mush” look that Lachman has defined modern cinematography as, which I never expected to see from a director of photography whose standards are so high above most people in the industry who don’t care how a film looks and would instead emulate the aesthetic of television than understands that film is primarily a visual (and aural) medium.
Scenes at night are severely underlit and sludgy, which gets particularly grating when we can’t see anything going on during its action setpieces, where Elliot and the Leopold family, comprised of Odell (Richard E. Grant), Shepard (Will Poulter), and Belinda (Téa Leoni, her first film role in fifteen years) hunt down unicorns to use them as “scientific research” for their personal gain. The inciting incident occurs when Elliot accidentally hits a unicorn with his car on his way to the Leopold household with his daughter. He repeatedly hammers it to put it out of its misery, but, as the folklore in its opening section reminds us, a unicorn can’t die. When they arrive at Odell’s house, the unicorn, whom they have stashed in the trunk of their car (why would they do that?), reawakens and is immediately shot in the face, splattering the faces of both Elliot and Ridley with its purple blood.
As the day progresses and everyone determines how to get rid of the body of such a mythological creature, Ridley realizes that the acne on her face is completely gone, and Elliot can now see perfectly without glasses. This prompts Odell, who is currently suffering from terminal cancer, to try and see if they can infuse the unicorn’s blood in his IV pack as a potential cure for his disease. Lo and behold, it works. His cancer is completely gone, without proper scientific rationale to explain how it was eliminated. This gives him the ‘brilliant’ idea to create a monopoly for cancer cures by seeking to exploit the creature’s healing properties and sell them at an exceedingly high price so he – and his family – can fill their pockets while preying on the vulnerabilities of ailing people.
Of course, this being an “Eat the Rich” satire, the unicorns fight back, leading to the aforementioned “over-the-top” deaths in its second half, where everyone may or may not bite the dust. As gory as some of them may be, Scharfman either frequently cuts away from the pleasures of seeing the entitled wealthy family get what they deserve, or Fong’s cinematography is so poorly lit that we barely get a chance to see what’s going on (not to mention the horrendous digital stitches and garish visual effects that never convince us these creatures are fully-realized). It saddens me so much that such a great photographer, who has created some of the most potent images of any film released in the 2010s, can’t find inspiration in a movie when, just a few years earlier, he had turned what could’ve been a disastrous direct-to-streaming effort in Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Secret Headquarters somewhat visually decent.
But I guess there’s no salvaging such a contemptuous affair that barely scratches the surface of its messaging, whether in its insistent repetition of the unsubtle “rich people bad,” message by having its rich characters continuously do bad things without ever developing them beyond the one-note attributes they are stuck in when they get introduced on screen. The only time it begins to dig somewhat deeper into its thematic underpinnings is when Scharfman focuses on Elliot wanting a better life for himself and his daughter. That’s why he works with the Leonards, as terrible as they are as people. They allow him to make money, and when the unicorn accident is a blessing in disguise for him to fill his pockets further, he goes along for the ride and has no morals, unlike his daughter, who wants to stop this madness immediately.
We understand why he desperately wants to enrich himself and provide for himself and his daughter. Elliot believes they will have a better life once he has more money, but we know that’s not true. Still, his hope puts him into a bigger mess than they already were after hitting that unicorn. Yet, it’s also the minimum to make us somewhat care about a narrative arc whose beats are so telegraphed that you'll know exactly how it ends if you pay a modicum of attention. Rudd himself doesn’t give a bad performance, per se, but Scharfman’s undercooked screenplay undermines him at every turn.
We care very little about his with Ortega, who desperately needs to move away from the typecasting shackles films like Scream and Wednesday sadly boxed her in. I’m sure she is a good actress underneath the tropey stuff she has been doing for some time, but we’ll likely never see it if she continues this unfortunate trajectory of playing the same character repeatedly. In fact, this entire father/daughter narrative arc rehashes beat-for-beat the exact threads from Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with little to no distinct traits between both films – a distanced relationship with the only parent she has, only for this supernatural experience to bring them closer together.
Thankfully, the Leopolds elevate this painstakingly dull film with some fun. Grant certainly riffs on his character from Saltburn, but Téa Leoni and Will Poulter undeniably steal the show. As sludgy as it may visually be, both actors consistently light up the screen with each scene-chewing line they’re tasked to deliver. Leoni, in particular, grabs the spotlight away from everyone and revels in her complete cluelessness at rationally assessing the situation she is stuck in, making up for some chuckle-worthy moments and, more importantly, acting as a reminder of how great of a screen presence she is. Since Brett Ratner’s Tower Heist, Leoni has primarily focused her work on television. Still, there’s hope that, at the very least, this film will give her a renewed sense of enthusiasm and ensure that the next stage of her career will be where she belongs – on the big screen.
If anything, this makes Death of a Unicorn worthwhile, but it doesn’t save such a poorly conceived affair. As fun as the acting may be, they go only go so far with a script that virtually gives them no favors, mushy photography, and a social commentary that says nothing new about something we already know: rich people suck. They absolutely do; look at how one of the world’s wealthiest people is crippling the United States to the ground. Do we need a movie to remind us of that fact when everything in the world shows us how terrible they are? Absolutely not. However, could Scharfman have the opportunity to at least say something with such an unoriginal thematic thread? Absolutely – there’s always something to talk about with how abhorrent the “elite” treats the vulnerable.
Sadly, his cowardice in not doing anything meaningful with his “pointed” satire leads me to wrap up this review with the same sentence I’ve uttered when a filmmaker tries to pull the wool over our eyes and believe they’re sending an actual message when they have nothing of interest to say: if you’re not willing to say something, what are you doing?