There have been some movies I have been trying to catch up on. I’ve already reviewed Weapons a couple of weeks ago. This was a movie I was planning to see when it came out in theaters. But, unfortunately, life got in the way. I was never able to see it until it got to HBO Max. Well, it looks like HBO Max is here to save the day again. Another movie I was intending to see when it was released was Death of a Unicorn. The first trailer hooked me when I saw it all those months ago.

Sadly, like with Weapons, life got in the way again. So, I wasn’t able to go see it… until it was put on HBO Max for free. So, after a long time of waiting, I was able to see Death of a Unicorn… and here’s my review of it!

Like I mentioned, Death of a Unicorn was just released on HBO Max for subscribers. It didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. So I’m guessing a lot of people didn’t go see it yet. As such, I’m making this review a SPOILER FREE review just to be on the safe side.

Death of a Unicorn follows a father and daughter who, while driving to the father’s boss’ forest retreat, accidentally hit a creature. It turns out the creature that they hit was a unicorn. Now, the father’s boss, finds out about the creature and how its blood can cure any illness. However, it turns out the unicorn they hit was a child. And the parents are in no way okay with them exploiting their child’s corpse…

As I said, the thing that drew me to Death of a Unicorn was the premise. I could already see it was going to be like a a slasher and a monster movie all rolled into one. There is a slight twist here as the slashers/monsters in this movie feels justified in their actions. So, who are the real monsters here? Well, it’s the billionaires who want to profit from nature without any ethical boundaries. Yeah, the overall message isn’t very subtle. The again, I don’t think the producers of Death of a Unicorn was going for subtle with their messaging here.

The best thing and, weirdly enough, the film’s biggest problem would be the main stars. Death of a Unicorn stars Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as the aforementioned father and daughter. Now, they do pull off some really good performances here. At the very least, they are putting their all in what I would say is a fairly mediocre script. I’ll get to that later. You can see they are giving an earnest performance in their scenes. Paul Rudd comes off as the father who has to be a glorified yes man to his boss because he wants to do good for his family. You can buy Jenna Ortega as the rough around the edges daughter who has a good soul. That’s good. What’s bad is their chemistry together. Not once did I buy that Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as being a family. Despite them trying to convey that very thing, I just couldn’t see it.

On the other hand, I actually bought into the boss and his family being related. Sure, their relationship isn’t, shall we say, built on love but more on a misguided sense of what a family should be. But I still believed it in a weird, twisted way. Don’t get me wrong! They shouldn’t be idolized as to what an ideal family should be like. But their dysfunction seemed genuine. Richard E. Grant played the boss and I did like how he came off so full of himself. He tries to come off as a wise and benevolent person but you know it’s only for show. Tea Leone is pretty much the same but she really seems genuine in believing she’s a nice person. I would say the best performance came from Will Poulter as the dumb son who always bounces from one endeavor to another but never follows through with any of them.

Actually, it’s the boss’ family and their interactions with the others that garnered the most laughs from me in this horror comedy. I do love how clueless they are and how they try to spin things around to make themselves the good guys of the story, even though what they are doing is objectively and ethically bad. This is especially true for Will Poulter’s character as, even though he hasn’t accomplished anything and has failed in pretty much everything he’s started, he still thinks of him as a very accomplished person.

As this is a slasher/monster movie of sorts, I was hoping for some inventive kills and gore. Well, there aren’t many and I found that to be pretty disappointing. There is one fairly creative death near the end of the movie but, when you have a film with mystical creatures like unicorns, you kind of hope that the writers let their imaginations run more wild here.

But now I have to talk about the script and, well, it’s not good. There’s nothing inherently bad about it. The problem is it feels uninspired. There aren’t any surprises or twists to talk about. There’s also a point where Jenna Ortega’s character tries to explain the legend of unicorns and it just seems like a weird exposition dump. And it’s an exposition dump that they tell the viewer several times! I just think this could have been done in a much better and cleaner way. As it came out, it feels sloppy.

All the same, I can’t say I had a bad time with Death of a Unicorn. There are some fun moments, mostly because of the boss’ family’s and Will Poulter performances. Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega are kind of a disappointment as I didn’t buy into their relationship as father and daughter. I guess I just had higher hopes for this. I say give it a watch if you have 107 minutes to spare. Just don’t expect too much here.

Have you seen Death of a Unicorn? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments section below!