lliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his teenaged daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are heading to Canada for a vacation – which is actually a business trip – and it’s off to a rocky start. He’s the VP of Ethics and Compliance and a seasoned, ambitious counselor for the wealthy Leopold family, whose wilderness reserve and ranch the two find themselves venturing towards. And she’s a sarcastic, moody teen, disinterested in serving as a performative piece of a fake family unit (in the wake of her mother’s death) to help convince the Leopold patriarch and pharmaceuticals magnate Odell (Richard E. Grant), an infirm man withering away with cancer, to sign over his interests. While Elliot suggests that they take in some nature or go on a trail run together, Ridley just wants to get through the weekend unbothered. But during a brief drive through the mountains on their way to the Leopold lodge, Elliot becomes distracted and collides with a four-legged, hoofed mammal – something that clearly resembles a unicorn.

“You think it’s endangered?” Beginning a bit like “Wolf Man,” with lush scenery and eerie sounds tunneling through the dense woods, the horror elements are apparent – as is the abundance of foreshadowing. But with Rudd in the lead, there’s a certain over-the-top humor as well; shocks are often alternated with laughs. The initial moments reveal a comedic yet somewhat realistic take on accidentally killing a wild animal, but once the eclectic Leopold gang is revealed – including wife Belinda (Tea Leoni) and son Shepard (Will Poulter), flanked by odd, snooping, severe servants Griff (Anthony Carrigan) and Shaw (Jessica Hynes), all as if players from “Knives Out” – the initially engaging premise quickly deviates into something decidedly more absurd.

As it turns out – and given away by the title and trailers – the death of the unicorn is significant not just in the eventual revenge tale, in which vengeful creatures spitefully attack the Leopold compound, but also in the horse’s blood, which possesses miraculously restorative, healing powers. With this detail, the film digresses to explore how humankind would undoubtedly exploit the situation; nothing can be viewed for societal benefits without firstly taking into consideration how much profit can be made. Greed is clearly the undoing of the species. The prominent send-ups include hypocrisy and unfeeling iciness, attempting to balance silliness and jokes with the looming scares of an inevitable onslaught. Of course, the longer it dabbles in the politics of a novel cure-all, the more it drags in the middle.

Eventually, “Death of a Unicorn” returns to what it really wanted to do all along, which is to mirror the human follies of “Jurassic Park,” with jests that nicely contrast visual horrors. It’s similarly Spielbergian with Ridley’s youthful, uncorrupted point of view – one that none of the adults wish to hear – as well as with various scenes of stalking and hunting. The bloodshed, however, is considerably more gruesome, relishing in outrageous butchery that is just ridiculous enough so as not to be entirely revolting. But it definitely doesn’t help that the CG unicorns are far from convincing (glimpses of animatronics/puppets fare much better).

Ultimately, the primary concept is more interesting than the execution. It doesn’t quite know what to do or where to go with its setup, tending to adopt too many monster movie tropes and to bumblingly filch shots of gore and chaos from superior thrillers as it weaves its way to a predictable reconciliation between disconnected, disharmonious family members. Nevertheless, even though it doesn’t amount to much as an original horror-comedy, it’s routinely satisfying, largely because it paints the villains with broad strokes and then gives audiences what they want to see in terms of ferocious comeuppances.

– Mike Massie