Death of a Unicorn

While on a business trip with his teenage daughter to the remote mountain mansion of a billionaire client, a recently widowed father accidentally hits and kills a unicorn with their rental car. The billionaire immediately sees dollar signs in the creature’s corpse, due its miraculous curative properties, and that greed brings unexpected consequences down on them all.

Elliot Kintner and his teenage daughter Ridley are spending a weekend at the estate of Elliot's billionaire boss, Odell Leopold, along with Odell’s wife Belinda and his son Shepard. Elliot‘s wife, Ridley’s mother, has recently passed, and their relationship has become strained. This trip, being made to secure a very lucrative contract for Elliot with Odell Leopold, along with Elliot’s laser-focus on ensuring that he and Ridley are safe and secure in the future, is not helping to mend their relationship at all.

Then, to make things worse, on the way to the remote Odell mansion, which is in what I assume is the Canadian Rockies, Elliot accidentally hits a unicorn with his car. When Ridley touches the injured beast’s horn, she is given a glimpse of the secrets of the universe, but the vision is interrupted by Elliot abruptly bludgeoning the injured creature to death with a tire iron, splashing them both with purple unicorn blood.

Roll credits.

Some time late, the clearly traumatized father and daughter arrive at the Leopolds' estate with the unicorn's body is hidden in their car.

Oh, one of the characters has a Bloody Mary…

What an excellent idea (pause).

Much better…

Anyway, once Elliot and Ridley reach the Leopold estate, we quickly learn about the Leopolds. Odell is at death’s door, riddled with cancer, and after trying every option possibly available to the ultra-wealthy, he has accepted the inevitability of his death. Belinda is the aging and self-absorbed trophy wife, the very picture of a wealthy woman of means and privilege, giving lip service to charity as she swans about her mansion in flowing silks and linens. Shepard, meanwhile, is the typical mediocre failson, unimpressive and born on third base, as he flails about in an entrepreneurial fit atop a pile of his parents’ money, craving validation from his father. We also soon learn that the unicorn's blood has not only cleared up Ridley’s acne, but Elliot no longer needs his glasses, and also his allergies are gone. Most importantly, we learn that the dead unicorn in the car is no longer dead.

At least, briefly, that is, until the Leopolds' bodyguard shoots it.

The realization that the unicorn has magical healing properties makes the Leopolds absolutely giddy with not only the financial possibilities, but with the possibility of curing Odell’s cancer. A group of scientists working for the Leopolds, led by Dr. Song, create a concoction by grating off some of the unicorn's horn, and soon enough, Odell‘s cancer is in remission. Odell orders the unicorn taken to their laboratory for further testing, planning to monetize its healing properties.

Meanwhile, Ridley has been busy "doing her own Research," and while, just like anyone who “does their own research,” especially when it comes to the weird, the supernatural, or their own health concerns, she comes up with a bunch of fucking nonsense and conjecture, but that said, this one time, she also happens to be right, which makes her a kind of unicorn herself.

Y’see, Ridley has been reading up on the Unicorn Tapestries, a series of seven tapestries that were made in the Southern Netherlands around the 1500s that depict a group of hunters chasing a unicorn. Debate swirls around them, not just about the identity of the artist, and the sequence that they are meant to be displayed in, but also their meaning. They’re mostly believed to be an allegory for the arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ, or possibly as an allegory for marriage, but Ridley believes the tapestries are literal, that they are a warning to humanity to not fuck with unicorns, or other unicorns will show up and fuck you up. The Leopolds chuckle dismissively at this, as they sip their drinks mixed with unicorn blood, and eat their medium rare unicorn meat, and prepare to ship the currently dead unicorn to their corporate lab.

Unfortunately for them, as the unicorn corpse is being wheeled out to the van, a pair of much larger and much angrier unicorns show up and start killing people, before gunfire chases them off into the woods.

Odell organizes a hunting party, because the greed of a billionaire can never be sated. One unicorn is not enough, he must have all three.

Meanwhile, Shepard is snorting powdered unicorn horn, and orders another scientist, Dr. Bhatia, to saw off the unicorn’s horn. While this is happening, the hunting party walk right into the trap set by the older unicorns, resulting in several more dead people, and this time, they get Odell too. Back at the estate, the unicorns show up and dispatch Dr. Bhatia in a brutal way that felt like it wasn't quite deserved, but whatever... and after that, they get Belinda too.

Griff, the butler, dips out, because fuck these people.

As the sun rises, Ridley is caught and held at arrow-point by Shepard, having learned that unicorns are docile in the presense of "pure-hearted maidens" so he plans to use her to trap the two other unicorns. The trap works, but as Shepard ties up the unicorns' legs, Elliot stabs him with the sawed-off horn of the dead unicorn, only to get stabbed with an arrow by Shepard. Elliot dies in Ripley's arms as the unicorns kick Shepard to death, but when they see Ridley mourning her father, they work their unicorn magic, resurrecting him and the dead unicorn both.

Right after the trio of unicorns leave, Griff shows up with the police. They find Elliot and Ripley covered in blood and sitting amongst a pile of mutilated bodies, so they throw them both in the back of a police car. The cops have weird uniforms and also they're super polite, which is why I assume this film is set in the Canadian Rockies. Anyway, as the cops drive Elliot and Ripley down the mountain, the trio of unicorns to return, freeing them from police custody by ramming the police car off the road.

The End

Judging by the near total silence that followed this film’s release, I was worried that the film was going to turn out to be the belabored result of a couple of overly self-amused screenwriters, who watched the movie Cabin in the Woods one time, and then riffed a joke into the ground, and unfortunately, that is exactly what it feels like… unfunny people unnecessarily adding to a already funny joke.

Also, having hit deer once or twice in my life, and having seen the result of other people hitting a deer, I really think hitting a unicorn would’ve caused much more damage to their vehicle.

Also, it’s clear they were saving the first use of the word unicorn for the “perfect” moment, which happens a good twenty minutes in, but that effort made everything up til then feel rushed and false. It just wasn’t believable to me that they would not immediately comment on the fact that the creature they hit with their car is a real life unicorn. I mean, they obviously know what it is, but it feels unrealistic that it's not directly mentioned. When Elliot and Ridley first approach it as it's lying in the road, there’s no “holy shit, that’s a unicorn” moment, and I really think there would’ve been one. It’s a god damn unicorn. It’s clearly a god damn unicorn. And in that moment, they never say it. They never say "Is that a unicorn?" That doesn't make any sense.

Then, Elliot and Ridley apparently decide they're going to put the corpse in their car, a rental car, by the way, instead of just dragging the possibly flea-ridden and definitely bloody corpse into a ditch on the side of the road, and then hiding it in some brush. Apparently, their plan is to bury it later that night when everyone is asleep, which is such a dumb plan… how are you going to quietly get some shovels from someone else’s house in the middle of the night, and then sneak out, drive away, bury a large animal, return, clean yourself and all your equipment up, and then go back to bed? Again... quietly, all while in someone else's house, especially a billionaire's house? Do you know the security code? Can you open the gate?

Ludicrous!

And yes, I know it’s fiction, so whatever, obviously it’s all fake, and none of that was ever really going to happen, because the plot goes the way it goes, I get that. My problem with all of this is, by not directly mentioning that it’s a unicorn in the moment they hit it, and by not showing us the discussion where they decide that the best course of action is to keep the corpse instead of hiding it in the woods, I just had trouble understanding everyone’s motivations here.

I get why the Leopolds would want to keep the thing, but why did Elliot?

More so, why would Elliot batter the creature to death when it was only injured, and also... it's clearly a fucking unicorn? I mean, if there is any animal you might try to rush to the vet, it's a unicorn, right? And even if he was like "holy shit, I don't want to be known as the guy who killed a unicorn, because it's a fucking unicorn, so I have to cover this up!" Why put it in your car? How do you get unicorn blood out of a rental car's interior?

Now, could these motivations be explained away? Sure they could. It probably wouldn't be easy, it might take some discussion, some obvious justifications, some delusional reasoning, some manipulation probably, sure, and most importantly, your characters would have to be in the wrong somehow, which means painting them in a bad light, but yeah, it could all be explained, it could all make sense. And do you know how they could've accomplished that? By showing us the actual scene where those decisions were made! Instead, they cut those moments in favor of the “perfect” joke of Ridley saying in an exasperated tone before the gathered cast: “It’s a fucking unicorn!” A joke that didn't even land.

That's some hacky shit right there, people.

Also, I find it hard to believe that this house didn’t have a safe room. Yes, that's a small thing sure, but having one would've changed things in the plot. It's a remote mansion of a billionaire, where help is far away. In a crumbling world where K&R insurance is a real thing, it just doesn't make sense that they wouldn't have one. Which is the film's main problem. Its clear lack of thought on display, its feeling of events being deliberately contrived in service to what has to happen, instead of allowing events to happen organically by creating a believable world, populated by believable characters, who make believable choices, all of which are informed by their established personalities and histories, which the film has communicated to us the audience clearly. Shepard, for instance, repeatedly mentions his compound bow in the film, and while admittedly, he also states that he isn’t well-versed with it, despite also saying that at one point, archery "took over everything" in his life, when we finally see the bow, it’s a recurve bow, not a compound bow. Why? Is it Shepard who did not know this, or did literally no one who was involved with this entire project from beginning to end know this? I really hate that it isn’t clear whether this was part of the joke, or if the film just didn’t care. Either way, it's a microcosm of the film's entire problem... details matter.

And then, perhaps worst of all, the whole thing drags. A lot, actually. It's really kind of boring for having such a great cast.

An indictment of American greed and corporate malfeasance and the pure criminality of privatized medicine, all overlaid with the clear message that white privilege turns everything it touches to shit, at the very least, I will say that it’s nice that the Death of a Unicorn makes no bones about its intended message.

But while I appreciate the film showcasing the absolutely irredeemable depravity of the wealthy one percent in America, as well as indulging in delivering upon them some well-deserved comeuppance, the film is too muddled, too slow, and overall uninteresting looking, ultimately squandering both its premise and its message. Worst of all, the kills are all very telegraphed, and they look terrible due to their overly-reliant use of cgi, so you can't even really enjoy that either.

Mostly, I was disappointed the film didn’t end with the looting of the Leopold’s mansion, and then burning it to the ground, while their corpses are left behind to bloat in the sun as they slowly rot into the earth, which is the only good thing that it's possible for a billionaire to do during their too long lives and their not soon enough deaths. But to be fair… the film does end with the unicorns probably killing a cop, so it’s not all bad.

In the end, this was a pretty disappointing snoozer of a film. The cast is really great, to the point where you wonder how this mediocre script got them all. Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Anthony Carrigan, Stephen Park, Richard E. Grant, they’re all great. Unfortunately, the script gives them little to work with, so none of them are really worth mentioning in this film.

Honestly, I’d only recommend this film if you have a crush on Sunita Mani, even though she dies horribly in this film. That having been said, I can't help but notice that the brown woman gets it the worst, even though she's an obvious victim of the greedy white billionaires, a real-world reality which means she is definitely not a unicorn.