Death of a Unicorn review: Jenna Ortega comedy-horror is stretched beyond its capabilities

The good news is that this is a better movie than either Five Nights at Freddy’s or the truly woeful Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (both 2023), but writer-director Alex Scharfman’s comedy-horror is still a concept stretched beyond its capabilities.

Straitlaced single parent Paul Rudd and his infinitely cooler college-age daughter Jenna Ortega are driving to a weekend gathering at his moneybag employer’s country pile when their car collides with… well, you know.

Understandably in shock, for more than one reason, Ortega touches the beast’s horn and experiences curious cosmic visions, seconds before panicky Dad springs into action to finish the wounded beast off with a tyre iron.

With the carcass bundled away in their vehicle, they arrive at their destination - but wait! Other house guests discover the grisly cargo and realise it’s survived Rudd’s attempted mercy killing, so one them opts to get the job done with a gun.

It gets sillier; a team of scientists also working for Rudd’s boss (Richard E Grant) grate the unicorn’s horn as a possible component of a cure for cancer - but it’s still not dead, and more unicorns (vengeful ones) rock up to give the hapless homo sapiens headaches.

Of course, any film where the threat to life comes from the U word plainly isn’t taking itself too seriously, and despite muddled subtexts of ambition, greed and loyalty, Scharfman revels in the nonsense of it all, over-egging his fantastical puddings with glee.

There’s suspense, nods to bygone horrors, elements of siege thrillers, a splash of slapstick, and dialogue that delivers a few great gags from a uniformly on-game ragbag assortment of characters.

In all fairness, it’s tempting to overlook the ridiculousness of the premise and the unnecessarily fit-to-burst narrative when we’re in the company of such a lively cast clearly having fun.

The initial awkwardness Rudd and Ortega share (think Jeffrey Jones and Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice) blossoms into a more dynamic chemistry as events escalate, both actors able to mine comic riches through subtle, well-timed glances.

Grant may seem, at first, like he’s going for a variation on the more obnoxious and maniacal traits of his breakthrough role in Withnail and I, but in a film with a borderline cartoon-ish plot, his nervous energy suits the tone perfectly.

He’s matched every step of the way by Will Poulter as his equally unlikeable son, a vivid portrait of selfishness and privilege, and though underused, Téa Leoni is the model of well-to-do snootiness as Grant’s wife.

Further down the credits roll, Jessica Hynes joins in the japes as the rich family’s personal assistant, and while her time on screen is limited, she likely finds the outlandish mayhem second nature, given its parallels to the more fanciful pastiche-y corners of Spaced, the 1990s sitcom she co-wrote and starred in with Simon Pegg.

Indeed, the discipline of shorter running times required by television might have been a better path the follow for a comedic setup that’s too busy for its own good.

It would be a different story if the overall pacing of the yarn was robust enough to thrive at feature length, because while this particular unicorn has the requisite horn, it doesn’t quite have the legs.

Death of a Unicorn will arrive in UK cinemas on 4th April.

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