It’s increasingly difficult to get people under 40—or, for that matter, anybody—out to movie theaters, but in the past few years, one genre has held consistent allure: Fantasy and fantasy-horror, movies fixated on wild scenarios and manufactured, convoluted mythologies, have become a big draw not just for young adults but also for those well into adulthood. It seems there’s no cutoff point at which it’s time to leave behind childish things. Make a movie about a grief-stricken dad and his daughter hitting a unicorn while driving on a twisty remote road, and both the young and the perpetually young at heart will show up in droves—maybe.
Death of a Unicorn, the feature debut of writer-director Alex Scharfman, released by A24, is one of those movies designed to draw its audience into a crazy swirl. The eminently likable Paul Rudd plays recently widowed dad Elliott, a mild-mannered compliance lawyer, who can’t seem to close the rift that’s opened between him and his disgruntled college-age daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), since her mother’s death. He’s invited her along on a business trip, to the wilderness retreat of eccentric zillionaire Odell (Richard E. Grant), the head of a hugely lucrative pharmaceuticals company. Odell is dying, and he’s looking to add Elliott to the organization’s board, a stroke of luck that would give Elliott and his daughter lasting financial security. On their way to Odell’s old Europe-style estate, they hit an at first unidentifiable creature with their rental car; when they step out to inspect this bit of almost-roadkill, they see its glowing single horn and a patch of oozing purple blood on its flank. Ridley, touched by the sight of this special and presumably dying creature, reaches out to gently touch its horn, an act that, in addition to clearing up her acne, sends her to a higher plane of consciousness: this is indicated by a whole Grateful Dead caravan’s worth of pastel tie-dye colors whirling around…
