Death of Unicorn (2025)

Shun the nonbeliever! Shuunnnn!

There’s a fine line between a film with a fluid tone whose unpredictability is charming, and a film whose tonal messiness is movie-ruining. Borderline, for all its scatterbrained indecisiveness, knew how to ride the chaos, skidding through three genres at once and somehow avoiding a total wreck. Death of a Unicorn, on the other hand, hydroplanes into a ditch. It’s a film with many ideas and even more moods, but none of it coalesces. I wish I could say it resulted in an endearingly strange gem, because it’s the kind of film I want to like. But alas, it’s just frustrating.

Death of a Unicorn is a thriller-comedy-satire with a dash of creature feature thrown in. It’s the latest in a long parade of eat-the-rich morality tales, which I have inadvertently binged in the past month (see: Opus, Blink Twice). Pretty much everything about this film feels mis-calibrated: the drama lacks heft, the satire is turned up to an unbearable screech like a mic giving feedback, the thrills are smeary and digital, and any sense of wonder or menace gets buried beneath a flavorless genre mélange.

Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) are driving through the woods towards the estate of Elliot’s wealthy boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), where they plan to spend the weekend, with Elliot hoping to get a promotion or some such. As they’re cruising down the road, they crash into a four-legged creature. Investigating their roadkill, they discover that it’s a… well, you read the film’s title. Ridley touches the unicorn’s horn and suddenly experiences cosmic visions, sensing in its last breaths of life great power and great peace. Disrupting that epiphany is Elliot, who clobbers it with a tire iron, then shoves it into their trunk.

At the Leopold estate, kooky stuff starts happening. The Leopolds discover the unicorn and quickly infer it has magical powers. They harness it for its healing abilities, which inspires them for a new pharmaceutical venture: selling ground up unicorn horn as an overpriced drug. Matters take a turn for the worse when some larger unicorns (the original apparently a foal) show up and are none too thrilled about this planned unicorn exploitation. Commence horn impalements, jump scares, and CGI gore that never quite feels earned or part of the whole.

This is the feature debut of Alex Scharfman, and while I’ll always root for new filmmakers swinging for something weird and personal, very little here works. The CGI is frankly atrocious — muddy, fake-looking (I legitimately couldn’t tell if the artificiality of the unicorns was intentional), and prone to undercutting any awe or horror the story might summon. The unicorn designs are bafflingly bland when they should be the main attraction. And the story’s pace and flow are very clumsy: the film lays its cards down at around the midpoint and then spends another 50 minutes idling toward a finale that isn’t particularly rich or surprising.

The best part of the film is the cast. Will Poulter is hysterically funny throughout the film, playing an insufferable rich kid with just the right blend of entitlement and obliviousness. Rudd does what he can to thread the needle between sketch comedy, fatherly pathos, and set piece action. Unsurprisingly, he’s most comfortable in the register of self-deprecating cringe. The supporting cast is solid all around: Sunita Mani, in particular, is a low-key standout as a panicked scientist out of her depth.

But the real highlights is Jenna Ortega. She attacks the material hard, way harder than it deserves, like this is some real awards bait and not a silly lark of a film. It’s unquestionably a better performance than the movie really deserves deserves. She doesn’t have much comedic material in the story, but she carries the dramatic load so capably that it almost convinces you this thing has emotional stakes.

Even by the standards of a broad satire, Death of a Unicorn operates in a realm of cartoonish extremes. The film’s central conflict is exceedingly on the nose (on the horn?): Soulless one percenters harvesting all that is good and pure in this world without consideration for how it will affect the rest of the populace or the broader world. It’s painted in such thick strokes that any teeth it might have had turns gummy. It’s not fun or clever enough to earn its silliness.

Death of a Unicorn is a film that excited me in concept — goofy thriller with an unusual creature at the center of it and a suggestion of a blend of mystical and silly moods. And it’s not totally absent zest or wit. But I’m still bummed at the results. I admire the cast for really going for it, but Scharfman’s execution lacks the vision or control to bring it all to life. He wants it to be a fable, farce, and a frightfest all at once. Instead, it’s not much of anything, trampling over itself with not much other than hoofprints left behind.

Is It Good?

Not Very Good (3/8)

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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.