Monstrous unicorns seek vengeance

    Death of a Unicorn combines gore, comedy, satire and, mythology in ways that never feel novel enough to merit much attention. For a movie about supposedly unique creatures, this one feels awfully familiar.

  Director Alex Scharfman builds his story around a widowed father (Paul Rudd) and his balky college-age daughter (Jenna Ortega). 

  Early on, the two travel to the isolated home of Odell Leopold (Richard Grant), a dying pharmaceutical mogul who's considering whether Rudd's Elliot should head the company's operations. Dollar signs flash in Elliot's head. Ortega's Ridley couldn't care less. 

   En route to the Leopold mansion, a distracted Elliot runs over (wait for it) a unicorn. Afraid to offend fat-cat hosts who profess an interest in animal life, he beats the wounded unicorn to death with a tire iron and stuffs the body inside his rented van.

   But wait. The unicorn's horn contains curative powers that save Leopold from a certain cancer death; the powders also cure acne and allergies, and could bring a bright and profitable future to Leopold's company. 

   The supporting cast includes Anthony Carrigan as a servant and Will Poulter as Leopold's obnoxious, know-it-all son. Tia Leone plays Leopold's wife.

   As it turns out, the stricken unicorn is a baby. Mom and dad soon will arrive to take vengeance on the greedy humans. These unicorns aren’t fanciful, hardly the sort of creatures you might find on whimsical wallpaper in a baby’s room. They’re large, monstrous, and boast teeth reminiscent of those bared in a variety of Alien movies.

   Fortunately for Ridley, the unicorns form a bond with her. She consults tapestries and learns that it's a bad idea to fool with unicorns, which we know to be true from the outset. 

  Death of a Unicorn ultimately sheds its horror aspirations and turns uni-corny, offering a supposedly emotional coda that, for some, may excuse an ample helping of gore, bodies flung this way or ripped apart.

  Rudd plays an ineffectual father who's blinded by ambition. Ortega does her best to be a "normal" college student, and the rest of the cast works at the edges of overstated parody.

   For me, Death of Unicorn had little appeal. This genre mashup struck me a series of hackneyed notes from a familiar song played out of tune. 

After a long rest, Beetlejuice returns

  It’s easy to see why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton’s follow-up to the 1988 classic, opened the 2024 Venice Film Festival. By the end of its high-spirited one hour and 32 minutes, the film has established itself as a celebration of the original. 

   Some might call that fan service, but I prefer to say that Burton, who’s now 66, treats Beetlejuice Beetlejuice more as a belated encore than a sequel.

  I'm leaping ahead but, for me, the best thing about the movie arrived at the end. A finale built around Donna Summer’s rendition of MacArthur Park — lip-synched by two of the film’s characters — gives Burton's second helping a near lyrical lift, a small triumph of silliness.

    Generally, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice provides intermittent amusement built around a few veterans of the original cast, most notably Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, the scuzzy demonic dead guy with a wiseass show business flare and an uncontrolled libido.

    Other returnees include Catherine O’Hara as the narcissistic self-proclaimed artist Delia, who’s also stepmother to Lydia Deetz, the returning Winona Ryder. Once a sullen teenager, Lydia is now the widowed mother of Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega), this edition’s skeptical teen. 

    As if to goof on the monetization of horror, the screenplay makes Lydia the host of a popular TV show called Ghost House, which purportedly investigates hauntings. Justin Theroux serves as the host’s producer, a self-aggrandizing sleaze ball who wants to marry Lydia. 

    The joke fizzles. Theroux’s Rory is so obviously phony that his sincerity becomes a one-note gag.

    The plot consists of a variety of contrivances that connect the movie’s set pieces and introduce new characters such as Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson, a TV actor whose afterlife existence consists of acting out tough cop roles. 

   Monica Bellucci plays Delores, a soul-sucking corpse who reassembles her severed body parts with the help of a staple gun. Delores once was married to Beetlejuice and now seeks vengeance for no better reason than he chopped her into little pieces. It's an old story; some people can't take a joke.

    Arthur Conti appears as Jeremy, a young man who seems to connect with Astrid until the movie adds a dark twist.

      The 1988 original -- which I saw in a long-gone theater in a long-gone mall -- certified Burton as a director to watch. Beetlejuice felt like a breakthrough, an outrageously inventive second film from the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure. 

       In the new edition, Burton smooths out rough edges with an animated sequence about the death of Lydia’s father, a healthy application of gook, and the addition of Beetlejuice’s mini-spawn, a flesh-chomping baby. A brigade-sized horde of ghosts in large suits sport heads that have been shrunk to the size of grapefruits. 

       Don't look for Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, the original ghosts. Their characters have moved on in their afterlife journeys.

       It's hardly surprising that the feeling of discovery has waned, but there’s still some fun left in a movie with a plot that can feel as stitched together as Bellucci’s Delores.    

       Besides, with Keaton fully embracing Beetlejuice’s slimy ways, Burton finds enough comic life among the dead to keep his movie from foundering.