At first, Elliot is keen to keep the whole affair from coming to the attention of the Leopolds, whose mock-medieval mansion has the look of being purpose-built for Satanic ritual, and might well contain a dungeon or two.
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But when it transpires that unicorn blood has the power to cure any ailment from acne to cancer, he seizes the chance to curry favour with his decrepit boss Dell (Richard E. Grant), as well as Dell’s conniving wife Belinda (Tea Leoni), and their seemingly empty-headed son Shepard (Will Poulter).
Soon they’re all debating how best to capitalise on their discovery, in the face of Ridley’s increasingly urgent warnings that there are things humanity shouldn’t meddle with, unicorns being one of them.
Granting that this kind of cautionary tale is predictable by design, there really isn’t enough story here to sustain a feature. Still, the waiting game is managed very professionally, with attractively simple widescreen framing courtesy of Zack Snyder’s regular cinematographer Larry Fong, and a range of amusingly caricatured villains.
Rudd is a bit miscast as a conformist bootlicker, but Ortega is one of the film’s main strengths, a small bundle of outrage who convincingly goes from comic petulance to sincere distress.
The other strength is the flexibility of the metaphor, which feels especially apt for the present moment. Unicorns could be taken to symbolise any number of things in the real world, and Ridley’s fury at the adults’ greed and cynicism would still seem justified.
Death of a Unicorn is in cinemas from today.
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