PHOTO COURTESY A24

There were two clear paths for “Death of a Unicorn,” a creature feature by first-time director Alex Scharfman: b-movie fun or elevated absurdism.

He chose neither.

Briefly, the particulars: Groveling lawyer Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) is on his way to a remote estate owned by his boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). He’s looking to impress and climb the corporate ladder; knowing his overlords are family-minded, Kintner has brought his reluctant daughter (Jenna Ortega) along for the trip.

Then they run over a unicorn.

Kintner, somewhat blasé about having slain a mythological creature, throws the carcass in the car and proceeds to talk business with Leopold, his fawning wife (Téa Leoni) and their insufferable son (Will Poulter). When all involved discover the healing properties of unicorn blood, the bigwigs see dollar signs; unfortunately, it turns out that the deceased equine was merely the little one, and there’s a very angry set of unicorn parents on the way.

Scharfman, mostly a producer to this point in his career, may well have borrowed the playbook from early-’80s mad animal flicks such as “Grizzly” and “Alligator.” Unfortunately for us, he had grander ambitions, spending more time on a painfully obvious morality play — yes, I agree that it’s bad to slay mythological creatures for financial gain — than he did on the beasts themselves.

Perhaps if he had more to offer in the way of visual flair or directorial style, “Death of a Unicorn” might have been rendered as a tongue-in-cheek exercise in auteurist horror; Scharfman was a production executive on “The Witch,” a good reference point. But aside from a series of cosmic kaleidoscopes — brought about whenever someone touches a unicorn’s horn — there is little evident style to “Death of a Unicorn.”

In other words, it’s a cautious, middle-of-the-road approach … to an angry unicorn movie.

Some among his cast bail him out, to a degree; Ortega (the reigning scream queen of record) knows how to inject emotional weight into outlandish circumstances, and Leoni and Poulter draw genuine laughs. (Rudd, normally reliable, is miscast.) Their efforts are not, however, enough to make “Death of a Unicorn” feel like much more than a near miss.

Frankly, it could’ve used more unicorns.

My Rating: 5/10

“Death of a Unicorn” is now playing in theaters.