Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd Star in Gory Comedy

The new horror comedy Death of a Unicorn stars Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd, and it taps into the currently hot trend of bloody horror comedies. It also enters theaters at a time when there are no big hits to provide unbeatable competition. But does Death of a Unicorn have what it takes to make it to the top of the charts? Read on for details.

Via USA Today.

Of all the ways to discover that unicorns exist, hitting one with your car is maybe the least appealing.

Yet that’s what happens at the beginning of “Death of a Unicorn,” writer and director Alex Scharfman’s debut feature in which a great cast elevates an uneven story that never quite decides what it wants to be. A treatise on greed and late-stage capitalism in which profits trump all? Sure. A gory-as-all-get-out comedy-horror movie? That, too.

And maybe a little family drama thrown in for good measure, while we’re at it. Not that there is anything wrong with a movie that incorporates a lot of different moods and feelings. It’s just that “Death of a Unicorn” doesn’t blend the elements as much as partition them off from each other.

Ah, but that cast. They keep things humming.

Elliott (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are driving through the Rockies on the way to the massive compound of a big-pharma magnate Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), who is dying of cancer and considering naming Elliott, an attorney, a proxy to the company’s board.

Also on hand are his wife Belinda (Tea Leoni, low-key the funniest of the bunch) and moronic spoiled son Shepard (Will Poulter, also hilarious). They’re all odious in their own ways, oblivious to anything but money — the having of it, and them making more of it. They treat their butler Griff with casual disdain, not even realized their ridiculous demands of him. Anthony Carrigan, so brilliant as NoHo Hank in “Barry,” is also funny; it’s just easier to say that the entire cast is funny and interact well with each other and their timing is impeccable.

But about those unicorns. …

Elliott and Ridley obviously have a strained relationship. Elliott’s wife died a few years before, and there is a distance between father and daughter. This is coming to light when Elliott, allergies ablaze, sneezes and hits a horse. Except it’s not a horse. It’s a unicorn.

When they check on it, Ridley grabs its horn and is transported in what looks like the way a 1970s TV show would depict a drug trip. (The effects throughout are loathsome.) This is interrupted by Elliott beating the injured animal to death with a tire iron to put it out of its misery.

This sets the tone for gore, which is considerable.

Get the rest of the story at USA Today.