Yesterday i went to the cinema to go watch Death of a Unicorn, A24’s new one-horned horror-comedy-thing. I could have reviewed it in prose, but i’ve elected to leave my thoughts in bullet-point form, as there’s a lot good, a lot bad, and not much conjoining the two in my mind.

The good

• I appreciate that this movie is wholly unapologetic about being about a unicorn. No tongue in cheek, just, yep, that’s a mythical unicorn, we’re fucking rolling with it.
• The design of the titular beast is also great, majestic but capable of being a horror monster when it needs to be. The decision to keep the legendary unicorn’s beard rather than shave it off (as has become common under the influence of My Little Pony) is commendable.
• Richard E. Grant and Will Poulter are great in it, and are the only ones who seem to have understood the assignment in terms of going buck-wild with their performances.

The bad

• The well of “films that are satires about the faux-progressive 2020s nouveau riche and how they’re all stupid dum-dums” has run well and truly dry — that this is a film literally about beating a dead horse doesn’t help. It could have at least had the dignity to come out before Glass Onion dealt the finishing blow.
• For a film that was marketed as a ridiculous, bonkers horror-comedy in the vein of Evil Dead II, it’s not actually that funny. I chuckled a few times but… that’s it, really; it never veers off that cliff into complete insanity like i was hoping it would.
• The portrayal of the visions given by the unicorn was boring as shit. Infinite ways you could show the sight of the transcendental, and you pick CGI nebulæ and stars? What is this, Guardians of the Galaxy?
• [peter_griffin_godfather.webm] I did not care for Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega. Their performances are nothing. Their characters are nothing. They insist upon themselves.

The neutral observation

• The fatal flaw is that the evil plan made a little too much sense. Like — actually, yeah, you’re right! I think once you’ve established that (a) the unicorn’s blood cures cancer and (b) the unicorn can heal itself, you do, in fact, have a utilitarian obligation to bring this stuff to market. Maybe not with the methods the evil pharma family use, but still.

TL;DR: 5/10.