A24's Latest Genre Mash-Up Death of a Unicorn Owes Spielberg a Royalty Check (2025)

Death of a Unicorn begins with lawyer Elliott Kintner and his daughter Ridley heading to the Canadian Rockies, where Elliot is due at the mansion of his employer, the CEO of a pharmaceutical goliath, Odell Leopold. En route, the usual father-daughter dynamics are on display, as Elliot seems to make every decision that puts Leopold's wants and needs ahead of his own daughter's. The dad is played by a seemingly always upper-middle-class Paul Rudd and is of a piece with the actor's chummy oeuvre. At once, without a word, he appears as such: fuddy-duddy, respectful to the laws that maintain his lifestyle, charming but ingratiating -- and a more than a bit square. Elliot might very well be the brother of the guy Rudd played in the movie Dinner for Schmucks, defending the indefensible until he's roused from passivity.

As for his daughter, Ridley, she's played by Jenna Ortega, who, at the ripe old age of 22, has carved out a very specific space for herself as the disaffected everyperson who is invariably caught up in the machinations of older, but definitely not wiser, individuals. Worldly in the sense that she has internet access, with a septum piercing to boot, Ridley doesn't exactly love that her father is Odell's sycophantic lapdog. Burning thoughts, coupled with that particular age in which everyone is the enemy, means speaking her mind freely, making her the de facto stand-in for the audience.

Death of a Unicorn Has Trouble Stitching Its Various Ideas Into a Cohesive, Satisfactory Whole

Alex Scharfman's Film is Never Boring, But It Rarely Hits the Sweet Spot

The film is written and directed by Alex Scharfman, making his feature-length debut after cutting his teeth as producer for films like the rarely-talked-about-but-definitely-worth-seeing-once man-baby thriller Resurrection, and the witchy, foodie House of Spoils. Here, Scharfman steps out with his own vision, aided and abetted by producer Ari Aster -- which says a few things about the film's general approach to tone-shifting. First and foremost, Death of a Unicorn is a comedy; it's also a monster movie in the Spielberg vein, in which whimsy can't help but cut across even the most dire of circumstances. More importantly, though less of a focal point within Scharfman's production, Unicorn is about the death of the natural world and childlike wonder. It's a bitter lament wrapped inside of a cross-generational story of dealing -- with the circumstances at hand, with each other, with the fact that things don't always go so well when the mega-rich find something new to exploit.

The meat of the plot really gets underway with a thump -- and then, moments later, another. A distracted Elliot behind the wheel slams right into a unicorn, to his and Ridley's gobsmacked horror. This thing can only be identified as a unicorn, but even with the facts laid bare in the middle of the road, it still seems an utter impossibility. It's not until Ridley touches the creature's horn that she's indoctrinated into a haze of magical transference that it seems to be the real deal from the storybooks. Abruptly, Elliot takes a tire iron to the dying creature, emitting the first but not last splattering of purple blood across the screen.

Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega Deliver Familiar Performances as Elliot and Ridley

With Characters Who Seem More Like Caricatures, The Main Reason to See Death of a Unicorn is the Creatures Themselves

Placed into the trunk for hiding, for fear that this unicorn was counted among Odell's wilderness preserve, the Kintner's continue onward to Odell's palatial estate, played by the petrified-eyed Richard E. Grant, his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), and son Shepard (Will Poulter), each worse than the last. For his part, Odell is sick with more than a foot in the grave, though it could be said that even a dying lion maintains a certain level of ferocity. Belinda, on the other hand, is a vain and vapid philanthropist -- which really means she does a lot of nothing and primarily maintains her own cosmetic flourishes. The treat here is Poulter, whose Shepard is exactly what one would expect of the son of a billionaire born with a platinum spoon in his mouth. When it's discovered that the unicorn's cranial appendage actually has magical, curative properties, the already terrible Leopolds become even worse, sewing the seeds of Scharfman's finale.

Like most feature-length films that concern themselves with simple, amusingly hook-y premises, Death of a Unicorn plays like an extended and distended sketch: quality and pace dwindle as the runtime stretches past its logical, satisfactory conclusion. Here, viewers have a really fine unicorn steak that's needlessly topped with a heaping helping of father-daughter dynamics. For Elliot and Ridley, the contrasting Leopolds represent an opportunity to look at themselves from the outside, to see what else is out there before returning to the comfort of their own relationship, with new lessons to bear in mind. The poignancy, however, is stymied by the artifice of the circumstances, which unfortunately gives the more genuine-seeming moments an unnatural aftertaste.

Easily Assailable Targets Detract From Death of a Unicorn's Amusing Premise

Bad People are Bad, Good People are Good, Everyone is the Same

It doesn't help that other topics are shoehorned into the film. Is there any audience member who's going into this movie without some preconceived ideas about the mega-rich? Pharmaceutical companies and their representational personages aren't in any dire need of Devil's advocacy -- they've got lawyers for that -- and Scharfman's vision remains resolutely of the mind that these people should be one-dimensional, totally terrible, and not that challenging. The problem is, for entertainment's sake, that the same note plucked over and over again loses its appeal after the third or fourth time, no matter how hard Poulter tries. By the time vicious unicorns are introduced, horny for revenge, Scharfman has used up most of his goodwill on easy targets and a joke that's already been spread too thin.

For some audiences, the inevitable, gory comeuppance will scratch the baser itch; Scharfman luxuriates in the deaths in a way that key visual reference, Steven Spielberg, does not. Still, there's a nagging sense that this isn't the first time audiences have been through this. The big lizards might now be unicorns, the bloodletting is more gleeful, but it's doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel. The problem here isn't the attempt to deliver a satisfyingly base climax, but that it comes across as going through the necessary motions to justify all that came before it. To make matters worse, the tasteful implementation of CGI begins to flounder with each layer of violent calamity, so that it eventually seems like a lot of acting in relation to something that doesn't exist. Like Kyle Mooney's Y2K before it, and any number of popcorn genre-flippers from A24, Death of a Unicorn takes an exciting premise and opts to take the least demanding road, the one that asks very little of itself and of its audience.

In approach, Scharfman's film is not like Odell's exploitation of unicorns. It's not concerned with going after the ever-elusive big laugh or even the doggy-baggable point that can be taken home; it's about mining the material for everything it's got, with varying degrees of efficacy. Unicorns, for all of their symbolic value throughout antiquity and beyond, are here rendered as yet another misunderstood creature to be taken at face value -- what purpose they serve humanity. Sure, it's amusing to consider that unicorns, if they were real, could actually be quite vicious, but how long before we're just beating a dead unicorn?

Death of a Unicorn is in theaters everywhere on March 28.

Death of a Unicorn

Comedy

Fantasy Horror

6

10

Release Date

March 28, 2025

Director

Alex Scharfman

Writers

Alex Scharfman

Cast

See All

• 

  Jenny Ortega

  Ridley

• 

  Paul Rudd

  Elliot

Death of a Unicorn, directed by Alex Scharfman, follows Elliot and his daughter Riley as they accidentally kill a unicorn while traveling to a work retreat. Elliot's billionaire boss aims to exploit the unicorn's curative properties, leading to unexpected consequences.

Character(s)

Ridley, Elliot

Main Genre

Comedy

Release Window

Spring 2025

Powered by

Expand Collapse

Pros & Cons

• The gimmicky premise goes in some unexpected directions (until it doesn't).
• Anthony Carrigan is great, though sorely underused.

• Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega both play it too close to their usual roles.
• The visual effects work leaves a lot to be desired.
• Scharfman's multi-pronged script fails to explore its most meaningful ideas fully.