Death of a Unicorn review – goodbye horses, good… | Little White Lies

Death of a Uni­corn review – good­bye hors­es, good riddance

02 Apr 2025 / Released: 04 Apr 2025 / US: 04 Apr 2025

Words by Billie Walker

Directed by Alex Scharfman

Starring Jenna Ortega, Paul Rudd, and Will Poulter

Four people standing outdoors near a building with red roofs and decorative architectural elements.
Four people standing outdoors near a building with red roofs and decorative architectural elements.
2

Anticipation.

My Little Pony was never really my thing...

2

Enjoyment.

Quite literally flogging a dead unicorn.

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In Retrospect.

It's a neigh from me.

Alex Scharf­man ral­lies togeth­er a cast stacked with comedic actors, but the result of this dull Eat the Rich’ flick miss­es the mark.

There was a time when see­ing the A24 logo offered some promise – but as Death of the Uni­corn is the company’s sec­ond flop in under a month, it seems as if the ultra cool film stu­dio might have lost some of their magic.

Death of a Uni­corn, a hor­ror-com­e­dy (although it bare­ly mer­its either genre) from debut direc­tor Alex Scharf­man, fol­lows father-daugh­ter duo Elliott (Paul Rudd) and Rid­ley (Jen­na Orte­ga), as they embark on a trip to meet Elliott’s new employ­ers. Before they reach the seclud­ed res­i­dence of the Leopold fam­i­ly – Odell (Richard E. Grant), Belin­da (Téa Leoni) and Shep­ard (Will Poul­ter) – they hit a uni­corn with their car and decide to put it out of its mis­ery. With no place to dump the corpse of the myth­i­cal crea­ture, they end up bring­ing their road­kill to the Leopold estate.

Of course an Eat the Rich caper begins when the Sack­ler-esque fam­i­ly realis­es the beast’s blood con­tains regen­er­a­tive prop­er­ties, then plods clunki­ly along with an unnec­es­sary amount of focus on the sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies of the unicorn’s biol­o­gy, the Leopolds’ exper­i­ments with its blood and how they can prof­it off the dis­cov­ery. Per­haps this sec­tion would feel more amus­ing if the many comedic actors in the cast were bounc­ing off one anoth­er rather than doing their own dis­cor­dant skits, or per­haps the cri­tique of the elite would feel fresh­er if this film didn’t come years after Par­a­site, Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness and The Menu, which makes Death of a Uni­corn feel a lit­tle long in the horn.

Not only is the film painful­ly unfun­ny despite the cast being stacked with comedic actors (includ­ing Spaceds Jes­si­ca Hynes who is woe­ful­ly under­uti­lized as the family’s body­guard), Death of a Uni­corn is visu­al­ly dull despite its mag­i­cal premise. The crea­ture design itself sports some over­sized canines to imbue the usu­al­ly inno­cent uni­corn with some hor­rif­ic qual­i­ties, but over­all is decid­ed­ly unim­pres­sive. In fact, like many recent fan­tasies which have fol­lowed the dogged­ly real­ist route of Christo­pher Nolan’s Bat­man series, the uni­corn has under­gone grey-ifi­ca­tion. Here it miss­es a trick that the cre­ators of Grem­lins or the twist­ed minds behind the gra­tu­itous­ly vio­lent Hap­py Tree Friends under­stood: adorable crea­tures that turn mon­strous are even more fright­en­ing than the grotesque.

As can be gath­ered long before Rid­ley – the anoint­ed insight­ful one of the group – realis­es, the uni­corn that has now become lab­o­ra­to­ry fod­der, was not alone. After what feels like an ungod­ly amount of time, the oth­er hoof does even­tu­al­ly drop in the form of a venge­ful mono-horned stal­lion ter­ror­iz­ing the Leopold’s fam­i­ly and staff. How­ev­er just as Death of a Uni­corn reins in the spark­ly, rain­bow visu­als you may have expect­ed, it’s also restrained with its gore, offer­ing only a few tame death sequences and much painful­ly dull spec­u­la­tion about how exact­ly the sur­vivors should escape. Death of a Uni­corn relies heav­i­ly on a myth­i­cal gim­mick and the comedic prowess of its cast, and yet gives nei­ther actor or equine enough mate­r­i­al to gal­lop with.

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