This one comes to us from writer/director/producer Alex Scharfman. Who’s that? No idea, this is his debut feature. But there was one familiar and instantly recognizable name that instantly turned my curiosity into dread: “Square Peg”.

That’s right, folks: Ari Aster exec-produced this.

I know Aster still holds a lot of clout in some circles, but Hereditary and Midsommar were both pre-COVID. In the time since, his only directorial work was the self-absorbed shitstorm called Beau is Afraid. As a producer through his Square Peg shingle, Aster brought us the fearmongering nonsense of Dream Scenario and the frustratingly opaque Sasquatch Sunset.

With news of Aster’s involvement, I grew deeply concerned that Death of a Unicorn would turn out to be another sloppy misfire too arrogantly avant-garde to make any kind of coherent point. In retrospect, I almost wish it had been. At least that would’ve been something memorable.

We lay our scene in the remote Canada wilderness, on a wildlife reserve that used to be indigenous tribal lands. This is the property of Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), an eccentric pharma CEO slowly dying of cancer. Thus Odell has retreated to his own personal lodge — in the aforementioned wildlife reserve built on indigenous tribal lands — along with his wife and son (Belinda and Shepard, respectively played by Tea Leoni and Will Poulter) and a skeleton crew of housekeepers, so Odell can die peacefully. Naturally, this means that arrangements need to be made and a lawyer has to be appointed in the interest of managing the estate.

Enter Elliot Kintner (exec producer Paul Rudd), a company lawyer who makes the trip to meet with Odell and the family in the interest of getting the job. To sweeten the deal, he’s brought along his daughter (Ridley, played by exec producer Jenna Ortega), an anti-capitalist college student who resents getting treated as a prop for sympathy points. I might further add that Ridley is still visibly mourning the recent death of her mother and Elliot visibly isn’t, so there’s that stress as well.

Complications arise when Elliot strikes an animal on the drive up to the cabin, and the animal turns out to be an honest-to-goddamn unicorn foal. Matters are further complicated with the discovery that the unicorn’s remains are a panacea that cures Odell’s cancer and makes him young again. Naturally, this means the family is eager to consume the dead unicorn in every way they possibly can and sell the scraps to their wealthy friends. Best of all, it turns out there are other unicorns out there and they are all pissed off.

What we’ve got here is a straightforward anticapitalist environmentalist satire in which a handful of greedy assholes exploit some new discovery without any regard for the blindingly obvious consequences. We’ve got Richard E. Grant as the delusional megalomaniac, we’ve got Tea Leoni playing the gold digger who can find a justification for literally anything, and Will Poulter is playing the spoiled junkie meathead. The three of them only think of themselves, their business is the greater good that everyone else has to die for, nothing is ever their fault and their comfort takes precedence over everything else, blah blah blah.

Elsewhere, we’ve got Jenna Ortega as the young woman who’s got everything figured out and she knows what she’s talking about, so nobody ever listens to her. Then we’ve got Anthony Carrigan, Jessica Hynes, Sunita Mani, and Steve Park among the seasoned character actors who all act and talk like they know this is a horror flick and they’re only here to get brutally slain by monsters.

These characters are all boilerplate archetypes and they’re acting out a formulaic plot to the letter. The one minor exception is Paul Rudd, here playing a corporate drone. The man has completely lost his soul. He’s too spineless, too weak, too far stuck on the boss’ nutsack to realize that he’s put his career ahead of his family. Elliot is seriously so far gone, it’s an open question as to whether he’s even capable of putting his own daughter ahead of his job anymore. Trouble is, that question doesn’t get a firm answer until the climax. And even then, the filmmakers took the most boring and predictable option.

With all of that said, there is still some merit here. After all, these are all seasoned actors and they’re all playing firmly in their established wheelhouses. Even if none of them are doing anything new, they all certainly know how to do it well. The film is so much better for the cast that was built for comedy from the top down. These are all battle-tested comedic actors and they know how to strike the right balance of dark humor.

Unfortunately, they’re all working against a script that’s too predictable to be funny. The satire is both too threadbare and too blatant to be intelligent or interesting. On the other hand, I can respect how far the film goes with the concept of literally chopping up and consuming every part of a mythical creature.

And anyway, we’re watching one-dimensional billionaire shitheels cowering in fear before getting brutally slain by an actual unicorn. If that’s not your idea of a good time, I can only assume we’re watching different news outlets.

The “monster horror” aspect of this movie is admittedly pretty good. The kills are nicely timed, there’s some neat atmosphere, and there’s just enough R-rated gore for maximum effect. It certainly helps that we don’t see many horror films that feature unicorns as the primary monster. (The only other one that comes to my mind was a climactic kill in The Cabin in the Woods, easily my favorite kill in that movie.)

Unfortunately, the horror aspect comes with one major caveat: The effects are shit. The reported budget of $15 million was nowhere near what the filmmakers needed for all the creature animation and gore effects in this picture. (For perspective, last year’s Abigail was made with nearly twice that much. Fuck’s sake.) The end results might look better on home video, but the flaws were glaringly apparent on a big screen.

Basically put, Death of a Unicorn is a satire about a deranged mogul who finds some terrible new metaphor for a non-renewable resource, sees dollar signs, and ends up with bloodshed. It’s a tale practically as old as cinema itself, from King Kong straight on through to Avatar. That’s not to say it’s a bad film — quite the contrary, these filmmakers do a solid job of building a movie along the established guidelines. The filmmakers don’t do anything new, but at least they do it reliably well.

Even so, given the laughably bizarre premise, it’s disappointing we didn’t end up with something more creative or memorable. I can recommend this for a home video viewing at best.