Death of the Unicorn Had Everything It Needed To Be Good
General Reviews
My experience with unicorns is limited. I mean, other than the few folktales and that mid-famous book series long back in elementary school (if you know, you know), there hasn't been much mention of unicorns in my life. That is, until Death of a Unicorn came out.
I was intrigued, as my good friend would say.
A dead unicorn? It felt like the beginning of an allegory. The super anti-My Secret Unicorn novel that my eight-year-old self once loved. I was ready for some wholehearted symbolism, some dark humour, some intense storytelling, slightly reminiscent of those old fairytales teachers read to us in class.
Okay, no, my expectations weren't that high. But they were apparently high enough to be disappointed. Think about that.
What really infuriated me is the fact that all the components were right there for the taking. Evil unicorns? Check. Great cast and acting? Check. Great concept? Check. Good dialogue? Okay, that was admittedly missing, but the cast somehow managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth and compensate for it with their acting skills.
The truth is that it really doesn't take a lot to impress me with storytelling; I mean, I binged The Buccaneers. I stood by it, thick and thin, even going as far as to defend it because the show works for what it is. I mean, it's trashy. It's intentionally incohesive, barely skimming the surface of any random plot point it throws at us, but I can't really complain. My job's to consume, to be consumed by its mess and accept it for what it is.
Death of a Unicorn, though, is completely different. It markets itself as something to be taken at least half-seriously. The unicorns are symbolic. The death is significant. It has something to say. In fact, it is saying something: it's saying humans are innately corrupt.
I can't really tell you what compelled me to watch past the five minute mark, but I guess some sadistic hope pestered at the back of my head, being like "it's gonna get good, just wait, it's gonna get good." Then by the eight-minute mark, after some excruciatingly painful exposition in an even more painfully dull conversation between Ridley (Jenna Ortega) and her father, Elliot (Paul Rudd), the unicorn dies.
If shock was what the movie was going for, it did not succeed (the buildup stretched on for way too long— you could see the unicorn coming from a mile away); however, at least the story actually starts. Kind of.
Okay, so moody, motherless Ridley scrambles out of the car after her father to see exactly what they killed. Jokes, the unicorn is still alive but suffering. This is a pivotal moment, and one that I thought should have been the entirety of the film. Elliot mutters that the unicorn is suffering and then goes back into the car. Meanwhile, Ridley touches the writhing horse's horn and forges some sort of spiritual connection with it.
I'm not going to lie, the CGI was horrendous, but the next shot is super cool. As Ridley begins understanding the point of the world or whatnot, Elliot comes in with a tire iron and beats the living crap out of the animal. I mean, the violence is excessive. The poor animal cries out. Blood splatters all over Ridley, yanking her out of her reverie. Her spiritual connection is lost.
At this point, I was hooked. This was the seed of the story. This was exactly what I was looking for. The dead unicorn equated life and nature, whereas Elliot was the combative human, severing ties with nature under the guise of survival or mercy. Ridley was supposedly the mediating bridge between these two worlds. It was the beginning of a perfect allegory.
So, here's where I thought the story was going to go. As Elliot and Ridley continue their journey to the billionaire's, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), house, the dead unicorn would be left back on the street. This would be the marker of human nature, destroying nature and moving on mindlessly. Now, Ridley would remain haunted by her father's actions, and the situation would get worse as Elliot makes a deal with the Leopold family. Their relationship becomes progressively more strained; meanwhile, Elliot and the billionaires start, I don't know, cutting down the forest or something. Except, something goes wrong. Cue the curse of the dead unicorn.
No? Okay, fine, there is a family of unicorns. They find the dead unicorn kid, and it's war between humans and horned horses. In any case, what made no sense was having Elliot and Ridley jam the dead unicorn carcass into their car before driving to the Leopold's house.
I swear to God, this movie hates its audience.
The story immediately starts crumbling for the sake of mediocre, out-of-context humour. I don't know why. It's so inexplicable, the random weak one-liner spewed at the randomest time. For some reason, Paul Rudd was acting like he was Ant-Man, in terms of his joke delivery and nonchalance. The only person who really carried this entire movie on her back was Jenna Ortega. She played her character with such sincerity that it was easy to believe the world she was in. However, even her acting slowly fell flat amidst the horrible humour.
Worst of all, the movie forgot what the unicorns were supposed to be. All of a sudden, the movie became this pseudo-slasher horror comedy, but it was neither funny nor was it a slasher horror movie. The unicorns were gross and ugly (which was a cool concept), but then they were just stalking the Leopold family without any clear motive, but also too much intentionality.
What's most frustrating with these kinds of movies is that they have everything they need to be good. Death of the Unicorn literally had to do one thing: remember the point of the unicorn. That's it.
I'm not even kidding. I mean, it kind of tried when Ridley randomly brought out the whole history woven in the tapestry about unicorns, but by then, it was too late, the movie had long since deviated from its original plot. Instead, the narrative escalated to something out of an Alien movie, with operations and experiments being done on the foreign entity (the dead baby unicorn). At this point, the unicorn became too tangible and real. It was the literal alien being, the other, that was being exploited and used rather than the mythological concept it was initially introduced as. Now, instead of man v. nature, it was science v. nature. Not a huge difference, I know, but it changes the context enough for it to alter the course of the narrative.
The story kept swinging from sci-fi to comedy-horror to folklore. Everyone's motives changed, including the unicorns. Also, they added random parent unicorns, which also made no sense and was the main reason the story became, for lack of better words, pointless.
Don't even get me started on the ending. I know they left it open-ended, and we don't know whether they were saving or killing everyone, but like... What? Why? Why are the unicorns so conscious and murder-bent? There's never any given explanation other than that they hate humans, but not Ridley because she's pure. I mean, yes, you can poke fun at mythologies and prophecies and whatnot, but if you're putting it into the movie as an actual plot device, at the very least follow through with it.
This movie is the perfect example of getting too caught up in the specifics. It felt like the director had an image of two or three scenes in this movie and forgot to plan the rest of the story. Elliot bashing the tire iron into the helpless unicorn's flesh was the perfect dosage of shock the story needed to come to life. The brutality of his actions juxtaposed against the innocence of the rest of the scene set the tone for the rest of the movie. Making Shepherd Leopold (Will Poulter) snort up a line of unicorn horn dust was so out of left-field it honestly had me cracking up. These scenes were the selling points of the movie, that much was clear, but at what cost? We got no plot, no real plan, no developed character, and unicorns who transitioned from symbolic monsters into weirdly humanized ones.
Don't get me wrong, I watched the entirety of the movie and remained consistently entertained. All in all, I'd give it a solid 5/10 for effort. My only qualm is that it didn't have to be so mediocre. It could have been unforgettable if only it had used the tools it was given.
The bar is so low that the movie didn't even have to use all of them. It just needed to remember the unicorns.
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