Wed, 02 Apr 2025 01:21:21 -0400WeeblyWed, 02 Apr 2025 00:03:47 GMThttp://oscartwoten.com/movie-blog/blood-blades-and-broken-bonds-creature-carnage-and-heart-in-death-of-a-unicornDeath of a Unicorn has been on my to-watch list from the moment I first got wind of it. Even before I knew what the movie was about, the name alone caught my attention, and when I learned it was a horror comedy, that sealed the deal for me. I’m a huge horror fan, and I love it when filmmakers mix their scares with laughs, so I just had to check this film out. I bought a ticket for opening weekend as soon as I got the chance, and now that I’ve finally seen the movie, I’m happy to report that it’s pretty fun.

Death of a Unicorn was written and directed by Alex Scharfman, and it stars Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, and Richard E. Grant. In the film, Elliot is a widower struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Ridley. He hopes their upcoming trip to his boss’s estate will give them a chance to reconnect a bit, but he ends up getting a lot more than he bargained for.

On the drive to the estate, they hit a baby unicorn with their car, and since they’re more or less in the middle of nowhere, they bring the carcass with them. When they arrive, Elliot’s boss and his family perform experiments on the creature in hopes of capitalizing on its magical abilities, and not long after they begin, the unicorn’s parents arrive and wreak bloody havoc in search of their child.

Like a lot of horror comedies, Death of a Unicorn doesn’t blend its two genres quite as seamlessly as I would’ve liked. It almost feels like two movies fused together, and unfortunately, only one of them fully works. Let’s begin with the comedy.

Most obviously, Paul Rudd plays Elliot, and he’s…well, he’s Paul Rudd. He basically just rehashes the same schtick we’ve seen him do a million times before, and in my opinion, it never gets old. Even when the guy isn’t cracking jokes, he exudes an irresistible charm that makes his character instantly likable, and of course, when he goes for laughs, he gets them. Granted, I wouldn’t quite say he had me in stitches, but he elicited a number of audible chuckles from me throughout the film.

In contrast, Elliot’s boss and his family feel like worn-out cliches. They’re the kind of arrogant, greedy people satirized in just about every “eat the rich” story ever made, and unlike Paul Rudd’s typical routine, these stereotypes got old a long time ago. To be fair, they have a couple of funny moments here and there, but on the whole, when this family takes center stage, the film really drags.

There was even a time in the first half when I thought they were going to ruin the entire experience, but thankfully, Death of a Unicorn finds its footing again at around the midway point. The tone quickly shifts from mostly comedy to mostly horror, and to my surprise, the movie ends up being a real blast.

You might not love it if you’re not a huge fan of creature features, but if you enjoy this brand of terror, you’re going to have a great time seeing these unicorns rip through their (mostly) helpless victims. Writer/director Alex Scharfman absolutely nails the tension, suspense, and action that monster movie fans crave, and he imbues the kills with the kind of gore you’d expect to see from creatures that literally have razor-sharp blades sticking out of their heads.

On top of that great fun, the second half of Death of a Unicorn also has some genuine emotional and thematic substance. For starters, Elliot’s boss and his family clearly don’t care who or what they have to hurt to put more money in their pockets, so the unicorn attacks carry a sense of justice you don’t always get in this subgenre.

What’s more, this ordeal finally allows Elliot and Ridley to reconnect, and their dynamic is genuinely touching. In particular, seeing Ridley go from angsty teen to loving daughter will almost certainly warm your heart, and that’s largely due to Jenna Ortega’s great performance. Ortega totally nails every emotional beat her character experiences, so even though Ridley’s journey doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, you’ll still be right there with her every step of the way.

My one knock on the second half of Death of a Unicorn is the visual effects. The unicorns are brought to life with a mix of practical effects and CGI, and when the monsters are digital, they don’t look great. It almost feels like they were rendered with VFX software from 2015, so when you see these creatures in all their “glory” (and I use that term very loosely), it’s painfully obvious that they were made in a computer.

That being said, I don't quite think the CGI unicorns are distractingly bad. They definitely don’t add to the experience the way, say, the apes in the recent Planet of the Apes films do, but as long as you know to temper your expectations, you shouldn’t have any problem suspending disbelief when these monsters appear on screen.

All in all, I had a pretty good time with Death of a Unicorn. Sure, this isn’t a great movie, and it’s not going to end up on my top-ten list come December, but it’s a fun creature feature with some effective comedy and just enough thematic substance to elevate it above its lesser cinematic peers. I probably wouldn't recommend the film to non-horror fans, but if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I suggest giving it a watch.]]>Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:37:10 GMThttp://oscartwoten.com/movie-blog/all-action-no-soul-the-working-mans-lifelessWhen you sit down to watch a Jason Statham movie, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. You’re going to see Statham’s signature charm, you’re going to see him beat up a whole bunch of bad guys, and…well, that’s pretty much it. As much as I love the guy, his filmography isn’t exactly packed with Oscar winners. In fact, a lot of his films are forgettably generic at best, so I didn’t have terribly high hopes for his latest flick, A Working Man. Sure, I figured the action would be fun, but I had my doubts about the story. Nevertheless, as a big action fan, I decided to roll the dice and give this movie a shot anyway, so I bought a ticket for opening weekend and hoped for the best.

A Working Man was directed and co-written by David Ayer, and it stars Jason Statham, Michael Peña, and David Harbour. In the film, Levon Cade is a former Royal Marine Commando who now leads a peaceful life as the head of a construction team. He doesn’t have much use for his combat skills these days, but that all changes when his boss’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by a dangerous gang of human traffickers. This horrible turn of events compels Levon to unleash his inner Liam Neeson and go after the bad guys who’ve (pardon the pun) taken the poor girl, and as I’m sure you can guess, a whole lot of mayhem ensues.

On paper, that sounds like a decent-enough premise for a Jason Statham flick, but unfortunately, the execution isn’t up to par. Like I expected, the action in A Working Man is pretty good, but the setup is so bad it kills the fun before it even starts.

The first act briefly touches on the major points we need to know to understand the story, but it stubbornly refuses to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum. It gives us just enough that we know what’s going on, but it’s nowhere near enough to make us like these characters or care about their plight.

For instance, there’s a moment when Levon gets to show off his world-class fighting skills before things really go south, and it’s one of the laziest scenes I’ve seen in a while. A group of nondescript hoodlums show up at his construction site to rough up one of his workers, and of course, Levon intervenes and saves the day. He fights off the entire clique all by himself, so there’s no doubt in our minds that he really is the toughest guy in this movie.

But there’s just one problem. A Working Man doesn’t bother to explain who these people are or why they’re there. We have no idea what they want with this poor construction worker, so the scene has no narrative weight to it. It’s about as emotionally affecting as a random fight clip on YouTube, so it does nothing to get us invested in these characters or their story.

To take another example, the scene where Levon’s boss asks him to rescue his kidnapped daughter plays out in a fairly cliched fashion. At first Levon refuses because he’s left the action hero life behind, but almost immediately afterwards, he changes his mind. It’s the kind of way-too-fast 180 we’ve seen a million times before, but surprisingly, that’s not the worst thing about it.

See, Levon has a little girl himself, so when he declines to save his boss’s daughter, we think he’s going to see his own kid and realize how much pain his boss must be in. But that’s not what happens. Instead, Levon goes to visit an old friend of his, and after a conversation the camera mostly skips over, he agrees to take the job.

There’s no back and forth discussion, no grappling with the ramifications of his decision, and certainly no compelling drama driving the change. He just decides to say yes, and that’s it. It’s even lazier than the construction site fight scene, so if you care about competent storytelling at all, this amateurish writing is going to make you roll your eyes so hard they might not roll back.

To be fair, nothing else in the opening act of A Working Man is quite as bad as those two moments, but none of it is particularly good either. This part of the film feels like it’s just mechanically speeding through a checklist of points it has to hit, so by the time Levon set out on his quest, I had already checked out emotionally.

I simply couldn’t bring myself to care about what was happening on screen, so it didn’t matter how good the action was. With no emotional weight behind them, even the best fights in the world will feel like little more than visual noise, and that’s exactly what happens here. Like I said before, A Working Man kills the fun before it even gets started, and not even Jason Statham’s signature charm can salvage it. The inept setup alone makes this one of the worst movies of the year so far, so if you’re in the mood to watch an action hero mete out some much-needed justice, don’t waste your time with this film. Just go back and watch John Wick again.

]]>Thu, 27 Mar 2025 19:19:53 GMThttp://oscartwoten.com/movie-blog/the-unkown-ash-and-a-mystery-of-existenceHumans love mysteries. They tap into our natural desire to grow in knowledge and plumb the depths of God’s wondrous creation, and they point to our eternal destiny. In heaven, we’ll be able to contemplate the infinite divine mystery forever, but since we’re not there yet, we have to settle for more earthly mysteries in the meantime (outside of prayer, of course!). Sometimes they take the form of real-life riddles, like science or true crime cases, and other times they come in fictional stories like the Sherlock Holmes books. Either way, we just can’t get enough of these brain-busting conundrums, so when I first heard about the new sci-fi horror mystery Ash, I knew I had to check it out. I bought a ticket for opening weekend as soon as I got the chance, and I couldn’t wait to see what mind-melting secrets this movie had in store.

Ash was directed by Flying Lotus, and he also stars in the film alongside Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, and Beulah Koale. The story follows Riya, an astronaut who wakes up on a distant planet with no memory of who she is or why she’s there. To make matters worse, as she explores the space station, she finds that all her fellow crew members are dead, so she has no idea what kind of danger she might be in.

Eventually, she runs into Brion, another astronaut who says he received a distress signal from her location, but in typical horror movie fashion, it’s not entirely clear if Riya can trust the guy. Is he really who he says he is, or does he have sinister ulterior motives connected to the death of Riya’s crewmates?

As you might be able to guess from that plot synopsis, Ash drops us right in the middle of this head-scratching mystery. Sure, the film eventually fills in all the gaps for us, but that information only comes in flashbacks. When the story begins, we know nothing about these characters or Riya’s dire situation, and in a lot of movies, that lack of connection to the protagonist would be fatal.

But not here. Director Flying Lotus uses every trick in his arsenal to make up for that deficiency, and the man succeeds brilliantly. He employs trippy visuals, unconventional lighting, and ethereal background music to craft an almost dreamlike atmosphere that pulls you in right away, and lead actress Eiza González completely sells the mystery.

From the moment Riya first wakes up, you totally believe that she’s just as lost as you are. She’s a perfect proxy for the audience as she explores her surroundings and slowly discovers the aftermath of whatever horrific event happened there, so despite not having a preexisting connection to the woman, you identify with her almost immediately.

You feel like you’re right there with her as she struggles to wrap her head around everything she’s seeing, so you can’t help but get caught up in the puzzle yourself. You desperately want to know what evil befell these poor people, and that question fuels the entire film.

See, soon after Ash begins, Riya starts experiencing flashbacks to the time before she fell asleep, and these flashbacks give you an inkling of what really happened to her and the rest of the crew. But it’s only an inkling, as the movie takes a number of unexpected twists and turns that will keep you guessing the whole way through.

Every time you think you have it figured out, the film will pull the rug out from under you, so you’ll have to start your theorizing all over again. It’s like a cinematic onion that just raises new questions every time you pull back another layer, so as a mystery, this movie is top-notch.

And as a fun sci-fi horror flick, Ash knocks it out of the park as well. For starters, the aftermath of the horrific incident and Riya’s flashbacks to it can get pretty bloody, but these images are never gratuitous. The victims’ gruesome fate makes the mystery that much more puzzling, so the gore has genuine narrative purpose.

On top of that, there are also a number of times when Ash ratchets the action up to eleven, and Flying Lotus infuses these scenes with a frenetic energy that will instantly put you on the edge of your seat. He finds the perfect combination of score, editing, and camera movements to make the intensity of these moments palpable, so you’ll almost be able to taste the characters’ anxiety as they fight for their lives.

Last but not least, I have to mention the ending. I obviously can’t get into any specifics, but I can say that the last five minutes or so of the film are great. They add another kind of super fun horror into the mix, so if you’re a fan of the genre, you’re almost guaranteed to enjoy this “final boss.”

All that being said, I don’t want to give the impression that Ash is a perfect movie. It’s not. It has a lot going for it, but thematically, the film is rather thin. I can’t fully explain why without spoiling some of the surprises, but this story just doesn’t say much. There’s a line towards the end that hints at a possible message about colonialism or the flaws inherent in our broken human nature, but those ideas aren’t prominent enough to constitute genuine themes.

The best we can say is probably that this is a basic good vs. evil story, but even that message comes through as little more than a faint whisper. The mystery is just so prominent it drowns out any deeper meaning the story might contain, so as much as I enjoyed that mystery, I wish the filmmakers had added in a bit more thematic substance to balance it out.

Thankfully though, that one flaw doesn’t even come close to ruining the entire experience. Ash is still an excellent sci-fi horror mystery brought to life by a unique, creative voice in the genre, so if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I highly recommend that you give the film a watch.

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