Death of a Unicorn review – Jenna Ortega shines in B-movie-style satire on big pharma

What if unicorns were badass? What if, rather than the twee, sparkly fairy creatures that distribute magic and glittery microplastic at kids’ themed birthday parties, unicorns were fearsome beasts with deranged amber eyes, huge tombstone teeth that could sever a man’s arm, and horns covered in the entrails of their victims like flesh pennants? It’s an appetising central premise. And this Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega-starring horror comedy, produced by the achingly hip boutique studio A24, certainly delivers on the grisly, torso-skewering gore. Maybe the jokes could have been sharper, but at least the unicorns’ horns make their point.

Killer unicorns are not an entirely novel concept. The ultraviolent 2022 cult feature animation Unicorn Wars – described by its director as “Bambi meets Apocalypse Now meets the Bible” – pitted unicorns against teddy bears in a savage battle for supremacy. But it’s a sufficiently distinctive selling point for this pulpy feature debut from producer turned director Alex Scharfman. What’s less original is the messaging that underpins the blood-sodden mess: that the real monsters are not the unicorns, but the evil representatives of big pharma – in this case, company boss Odell, played by Richard E Grant, his trophy wife, Belinda, played by Téa Leoni, and their idiot son, Shepard, a role that allows Will Poulter to hog the lion’s share of the best jokes – plus most of the recreational drugs.

Death of a Unicorn more or less fulfils the brief of a monster flick, sharing DNA, if not the special effects budget, of something like the Jurassic Park series. But it feels rather ideas-thin compared with some of the more satisfying movies that have harnessed an anti-corporate message: Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking, Adam McKay’s The Big Short, Curtis Hanson’s Too Big to Fail – even Joshua Oppenheimer’s flawed, recently released The End, which, like Death of a Unicorn, gives us an outsider’s eye view into the household of an oligarch.

The outsiders in this scenario are widowed dad Elliot (Rudd) and his semi-estranged daughter, Ridley (Ortega). The distance between them is painfully clear from the start, when Ridley falls asleep on her father’s shoulder during a flight and Elliot is heartbreakingly flummoxed by the unexpected intimacy. The pair are on a trip to a luxury lodge deep in a wildlife reserve owned by his terminally ill employer, Odell. A trusted employee, Elliot is in the running to take over the reins of the business now that Odell is too frail to continue. This meeting, Elliot hopes, is to formalise the agreement. However, Odell insists on getting to know Elliot’s family, which, after the death of his wife, is just Ridley. And she would rather be anywhere else on the planet than meeting her dad’s boss deep in a forest with no phone signal. Ortega has inherited the mantle of deadpan goth-chick sarcasm that was previously the trademark of actors such as Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci – and she wears it well.

Before they even make it to Odell’s fortified shrine to extreme wealth, they run into a spot of bother. More specifically, they run into a unicorn. But while Ridley forges a spiritual connection with the gravely injured animal – she grasps its glowing horn and is immediately sucked into a trippy celestial hallucination – Elliot decides to put it out of its misery with a tyre iron. It’s a messy business; both are splattered with unicorn blood, which they soon realise has miraculous curative properties (Ridley’s acne and Elliot’s allergies instantly clear up).

For no reason other than lazy plot convenience, rather than leaving it at the roadside, Elliot loads the animal into his rental car, intending to bury it later. What he doesn’t realise is that unicorn horns act as electromagnetic transmitters, and the creature’s inert body is beaming out a distress signal, summoning its relatives. While Odell and his opportunistic wife and son, having realised that the unicorn corpse is a cash cow, are busy attempting to hawk the creature’s body parts to the highest bidders, furious unicorns are assembling beyond the compound walls. It’s only a matter of time before carnage ensues.

There are a few missed opportunities. Grant, who is more than capable of turning in a mythical monster-sized performance, feels a little underused. Rudd’s mild-mannered everyman routine, meanwhile, teeters on the brink of bland. Then there’s the rudimentary CGI effects – at times, the fearsome unicorns look more like souped-up pantomime horses. This is less of a problem than you may think; it just requires an expectation reset. Rather than a slick, high-concept fantasy action picture in the vein of Everything Everywhere All at Once, here is a B-movie throwback with its roots in the pulpy creature features of the 1950s. Viewed from this perspective, the shonky special effects are just part of the fun.

• In UK and Irish cinemas