Death of a Unicorn – A Review

I grew up loving Jurassic Park; it was my favourite movie as a kid, and I’m still instantly transported to Isla Nublar when I hear that John Williams score. The inciting incident of the film is a velociraptor killing its handler, so before the park can open, experts are brought to certify its safety. John Hammond (played by Richard Attenborough) created the park and is responsible for the project that cloned the dinosaurs. Still, Attenborough’s Hammond is a warm character not too dissimilar from another role he was known as to 90s kids, Kris Kringle, in Miracle on 34th Street. While we are still given a sense that he was a shrewd businessman through his interactions with Dennis Nedry, his interest in the creation of the park is not depicted as purely monetary and, once it becomes dinosaurs are dangerous to humans and cannot be contained by man, he no longer wanted to open a park but to preserve them separately on their own island away from humanity. This was a very altruistic take on the wealthy industrialist, who was excited by the science and dinosaurs but valued life over profit.

Death of a Unicorn (written and directed by Alex Scharfman) feels like a contemporary version of a ‘Jurassic Park’ story. It begins with an incident, the supposed titular ‘death of a unicorn,’ but Ridley (played by Jenna Ortega) and Elliot (played by Paul Rudd) are already on route to their isolated location in Elliot’s attempt to secure favour/a better contract with his wealthy employers. When the rich family realizes the unicorn healing properties, they immediately think of how it can benefit them. They rope Elliot in, ignoring Ridley’s warnings about the dangers of caging unicorns. As it is a contemporary version, they don’t get the third-act redemption Hammond does; they double down in their beliefs that their wealth and power give them the right to reap the benefits and profit from all the unicorn(s) have to offer.

When everything starts to go bad, the Jurassic Park similarities become stronger. The initial unicorn attack has moments very reminiscent of Jurassic Park, particularly the sequence with Grant, the kids, the T-Rex, and the Jeeps just after the power went out. It’s also worth noting Jurassic Park III survivor Amanda Kirby was played by Téa Leoni, who plays Belinda, the matriarch of the wealthy family. But, Jurassic Park is not the only Steven Spielberg film that gets loving homage in this film (intentional or not). I could not help but notice, at the start of the scene, when the scientists take away the baby unicorn in the white tunnel, it was very reminiscent of E.T.

Now because it is a film about unicorns, you have to talk about the unicorns themselves. I found the depictions of the unicorns to be inconsistent, with them sometimes looking a great cross between beautiful and terrifying but at other times very underwhelming and almost like they weren’t fully rendered (not sure if that was an effect they were going for that I didn’t understand). Overall, I found the unicorns worked the best when you were not seeing all of them. When you only saw the legs/shadows, when Ridley was under the car, or when a horn busted through a chest. It takes me back to Jurassic Park, despite having amazing dinosaurs, the moments of fear in the movie are often brought on when you don’t see them. The moments before an attack. The ripples in the water. Of course, these moments of tension were added by the score, as are the ones in Death of a Unicorn, where Dan Romer & Giosiè Greco wove an inspired score that stitches the sounds of the tapestries of unicorns Ridley pores over with those club beats.

Death of a Unicorn is currently in theatres.