As I write, it is apparently International Unicorn Day, whatever that means. I have never seen even a National Unicorn (the closest thing we have to a National Unicorn here in the UK is Brexit, which has become the equivalent of an ill-thought-through house extension – hardly anyone thinks it was a good idea any more, but there is no point in arguing about it), but I suppose an International Unicorn must be something really especially fabulous.

What, you may be wondering, is the point of International Unicorn Day? Well – and here I quote from a website presumably beloved of International Goofballs everywhere – 'if we don't take time out to celebrate a beautiful, horned, rainbow�printed mythical creature then we�re most definitely missing a trick. The unicorn is a symbol of happiness, fantasy, and wonder.' Hmmm. It's a bit difficult to know what to say, beyond the obvious truism that goofballs are going to goof.

Oh hang on, there's more – 'incorporate that unicorn magic into your day by adding unicorns to your outfit, makeup, hair, and more!' I don't know, this is usually a bad hair day for me most weeks anyway, even before contemplating adding unicorns to my tonsorial regime. Or, if you fancy doing something a bit more left-field on this special day, show how you really feel by going to see Alex Scharfman's Death of a Unicorn.

Leading the movie are Paul Rudd (engaging as ever, though less sympathetic for once) and Jenna Ortega (not really doing anything new here), who play Elliot and Ridley Kinter, a father and daughter who have just arrived somewhere a bit vaguely defined – it could be in the far north of either Canada or the USA (you may feel free to insert your own joke about this here). Elliot is here to finalise a deal where he will take over the running of the enormous pharmaceutical corporation run by his terminally-ill boss (Richard E Grant), but to succeed the two of them will have to pretend to have a non-dysfunctional relationship. Things get off to a sub-optimal start when the bickering on the drive to the boss' luxurious forest retreat is so distracting Elliot ends up hitting a. . .

Well, it appears to be an equine mammal with an unusual keratinous projection from its sincipital region. For no very convincing reason (the script does creak a bit here and there), Elliot decides to load the carcass into the back of their vehicle and take it with them to the very important meeting they are here for. This takes on a whole new aspect when Grant and his family (Tea Leoni plays his wife, Will Poulter his son) discover that being splashed with unicorn blood has not only cleared up Ridley's acne, but fixed Elliot's allergies and eyesight too (it doesn't seem to have had any effect on Ridley's piercings though).

Soon enough the scientists have been called in and everyone except Ortega is frantically calculating just how much money they can make by flogging the universal panacea of dead unicorn body parts to other super-rich and powerful people. But something is stirring in the surrounding woodland, for it turns out that the dead unicorn was a baby one, and its shire-horse sized relatives are going to take exception to seeing its remains exploited in this fashion. . .

On one level this is a comfortingly familiar people-being-attacked-and-eaten-by-monsters-in-the-woods movie, given a touch of class by the fact it has a slightly better cast than you'd expect (Jessica Formerly-Stevenson turns up as a shotgun-toting domestic, though not for long) and generally feels a bit slicker than your usual Sci-Fi Channel nonsense. What shifts it over into the comedy-horror bracket is the fact that the monsters are, well, unicorns, which – as we have learned – are more commonly symbols of 'happiness, fantasy, and wonder'. It's not an awful premise for a movie, and the sight of a fairly well-known performer having their entrails ripped out and eaten by a magic horse is not one I will quickly forget, but possibly not as original as the director thinks (aggressively hostile unicorns have turned up in a number of other venues, for example Ben Aaronovitch's novel Foxglove Summer).

Still, the comedy element does open up the door for some other ideas, mainly some sledgehammer satire about the amoral rapacity of Big Pharma. The cast approach this full-bloodedly – maybe a bit too full-bloodedly, as it leaves Jenna Ortega stuck with a somewhat thankless 'voice of reason' role that doesn't leave her much to work with. In the end the basic idea is an amusing one, but the script doesn't find many interesting ways to develop or expand on it, so in the end the movie settles for being a kind of splatstick farce with steals from all over the place – it's not as funny as I was hoping it would be, and neither is it particularly frightening – the film relies heavily on the 'I can hear something coming – ulp, I've suddenly been impaled' quiet-LOUD formula to generate jump-scares. This also provides many opportunities for reasonably inventive gore.

To be honest, given that one of the credited executive producers is Ari Aster, I would have hoped for something a bit more twisted and ambitious – the movie is content to reuse horror tropes rather than do anything more surprising with them. Perhaps this is a case of it being one of those movies which might have been better had it been made on a rather lower budget – being able to afford multiple CGI unicorns means that Scharfman sticks them on the screen throughout the third act, when it might have been more effective to show less and suggest more.

Still, it's the kind of mid-budget genre movie which usually comes out around this time of year, so perhaps one shouldn't expect too much. Rudd and Ortega lead the movie well (though one wonders how many horror and horror-adjacent movies she can do before getting typed), and the scenery is nice (Hungary stands in for North America quite creditably). This isn't a movie for people with a low gore threshold, and it could have done with being funnier, but in the end it passes the time fairly agreeably. This is still one of those films where the basic idea was probably better than the finished product, though.

Also Showing. . .

. . . Mr Burton, another one of those true-story period dramas which the BBC's film wing in particular does so well. This one is about the formative years of the actor Richard Burton, he of the mighty voice (and, oftimes, mighty thirst). The title character, however, is his English teacher, who was a great inspiration and whose name he ended up taking. Toby Jones plays the teacher, Harry Lawtey plays The Man Who Will Be Burton, Lesley Manville plays their landlady, and the period setting is rammed home by putting CGI collieries into the back of every exterior shot.

For the most part this is rather nicely done, with prior knowledge of Burton not really required. Part of the film's thesis, however, is that Burton's personal demons were the result of a sense of insecurity stemming from a Welsh miner's son having to reinvent himself as something quite different. True this may be, but it's presented here a bit too simplistically. Nevertheless, it's well-played and interesting, though it does cast loose from historical fact just as much as you'd expect. Still, very watchable and a fine reminder of the important fact that English teachers are wonderful, virtuous people.

Awix

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