Starring: Paul Rudd, Jenny Ortega, Will Poulter, Tea Leoni, Richard E Grant
Distributor: A24
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A father and daughter accidentally hit and kill a unicorn en route to a weekend retreat where his billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.
Certainly an arresting title. Unicorns take us into the world of imagination, fantasy, even of symbolism. But with death in the title, it is all rather foreboding. What follows is a rather sombre drama with the audience kept alert by unexpected events, memories of stories about unicorns, and the screenplay makes them more and more symbolic as the action goes on.
A lawyer and his young daughter, grieving the death of her mother, are seen travelling on a highway out in a forest wilderness. He is intent on getting the wealthy owner of a mansion, with terminal cancer, to sign documents for the administration of this estate. He lives with his wife, son and heir, and two servants. He is pharmaceutical tycoon with his own laboratory and doctors and assistants.
The father and daughter are played by Rudd and Ortega. The wealthy family members are Grant as the dying tycoon, Leoni as his wife and Poulter standing out as the spoilt son.
But, in this context, there is an accident on the highway. The car hits a unicorn and from there the film becomes quite unpredictable. It tantalises with the behaviour of the characters, the power of the unicorns, speculation on the symbolism, healing powers, hostility to humans…
A word of caution. If this review has stimulated interest, a warning that there are quite some horror and brutality sequences in a number of deaths throughout the film… and an ‘Eat the Rich’ theme. Unpredictable journey which turns into symbolic nightmare.
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