Mr. Pokey Gets His Revenge

Every once in a while a film comes along that is worth a chuckle just from the concept. You know the ones, like Real Steel, about professional Rock’em Sock’em Robots, or Monster Trucks, which was about, you’ll never guess, monsters… that live in trucks. These ideas are general pretty stupid on paper, and they frequently, but not always, lead to pretty stupid films when put into practice (Monsters Trucks lives on as nothing more than a punching bag for jokes from guys like me, but Reel Steel did build a cult following after its release), but even then sometimes you can find some amount of fun from them.

Case in point, Death of a Unicorn. The film, as you would expect, is about some people that accidentally kill a unicorn and then, because they’re idiots, find a way to make everything worse when other unicorns come for their revenge. Unicorns are depicted in most media as kindly, peaceful, pure creatures (the occasional Cabin in the Woods notwithstanding), so taking these creatures and turning them into horror murder machines is certainly a fun twist. It could lead to solid laughs and even more solid horror.

Sadly I don’t feel like Death of a Unicorn ever really gets there. While the film is fun and funny at times, it doesn’t quite have the pace and execution to really pull off what it’s trying to do. It’s one of those films where you can tell a few people had one really stupid idea (possibly while high) and then wrote as much of a script as they could, putting in every joke they had in the process, only to then run out of steam sometime before the last act without really being sure how to end it. It’s a great idea that doesn’t quite stick the landing, making for a fun, but uneven, watch.

Elliot (Paul Rudd) is a widower that just wants to do right by his teenaged daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega). He has been working himself constantly at his job, which has earned him the attention of the company’s owner, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). Having proven himself, Elliot is invited to go up to the Leopold estate in the Canadian Rockies to help iron out a plan that would transfer ownership, eventually, of the company from Odell, who is dying, to new owners, presumably with a sizable payout in the process. That payout is hung over Elliot’s head as he’d get a percentage, which means Odell has power over Elliot.

On the drive from the airport to the estate, an animal darts out and Elliot hits it with the rental car. What he and Ridley find is a dying unicorn. Curiously touching its horn helps clear up Ridley’s persistent acne as well as Elliot’s bad vision, details they pick up on later after moving the dead creature into the back of their car. Except the creature wasn’t quite so dead, and it tries to escape from the car after Elliot and Ridley get to the estate. Soon, the rich family realizes what they have on their hands: a dead (again, because they shoot it) creature that can heal all wounds and possibly let someone live forever. It’s a fountain of youth, and the Leopolds plan to exploit it for all it’s worth, despite Ridley realizing that these creatures may have a dark side that could come back to bite all of them very, very soon.

Functionally, Death of a Unicorn is a tale we’ve seen before. People make a mistake, get used by their rich, corporate owners, and then those corporate owners exploit something special for all its worth, only seeing dollar signs and not anything else. Naturally this does come back to bite them because their own hubris was too great. They ignore the signs, pretend they’re immortal, and go on being evil, rich people until, finally, they meet their comeuppance. This isn’t a new story by any means and, for the most part, the film doesn’t deviate from this formula at all.

Hell, the actors they cast as the rich family – Richard E. Grant as Odell Leopold, Téa Leoni as Belinda Leopold, and Will Poulter as Shepard Leopold – all seem to be in on the joke, enjoying the ability to chew the scenery and have fun being deliciously evil. It works well in the moment, although it does stand in weird contrast to the performances from Rudd and Ortega which are definitely more natural. It’s like the two families are from two different movies and they don’t quite gel together so well.

It’s hard to tell if the film wants to be a horror comedy or a comedic horror, and there is a difference. One is trying to horror that is occasionally spiked with humor, and the other is all about the joke, using the horror of the moment to spike the laughs. At times Death of a Unicorn plays like a horror film, building up the dread and anticipation of the monsters that will come (the other unicorns)... but then other times it seems to go much harder on the humor, even during the gory kill sequences, and it doesn’t really feel like the film knows quite what it’s going for at all.

In fairness, comedy is hard, and so is horror. The two genres are often intertwined because there are aspects of both genres that play to the same strengths: build up, anticipation, release. Sometimes you can use comedy to release a little tension before a big scare comes, making the scare more unexpected. Other times you can use a bloody kill as the accent to a joke. A horror film can use comedy well, and actually integrate it into the flow of the film in a way that feels right. Death of a Unicorn never really gets there.

I think my big problem is that despite how funny the concept is, the film isn’t really that funny. It has some moments, sure, and a couple of characters that are very funny on their own (Anthony Carrigan is featured as the family butler, Griff, and he is always a treat to see in films) but on the whole the film doesn’t frequently nail its jokes. At the same time it’s not really scary enough to be a good horror film. It has interesting monster design, and plenty of gore, but the scares don’t really feel like they build well. The movie struggles to build anticipation, and then it doesn’t know how to control the release either, leading to horror scenes that lack build up and then feel like they don’t go anywhere. It’s a horror comedy that isn’t that funny and isn’t especially scary either.

I think the reason I liked it as well as I did is because it has likable actors in it. Kerrigan is always great, Rudd is a constant, assured presence, and Ortega is fast becoming one of my favorite new actors. They’re great and they are solid in their scenes, they just don’t have a whole lot to work with here. Death of a Unicorn is a film with a solid concept that then squanders much of its potential, and its cast, in a pretty leaden film. It’s a movie that should have taken risks with its unusual monster but, instead, tells a story we’ve seen before just with a slight twist. I wanted to like it more than I did, but I think now that I’ve watched it I likely won’t ever go back to it. There are much better horror comedies out there than Death of a Unicorn.