Movies

Death of a Unicorn, starring Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd, directed by Alex Scharfman
Trailer: A24

Death of a Unicorn
Directed by Alex Scharfman
Rated R
Rammed 28 March 2025
#DeathOfAUnicorn

Death of a Unicorn has its gruesome moments, but it’s the movie’s multi-layered complexity that should be savored even more than its awkward sense of humor.

Welcome to Spring!

It helps to go into a movie with the correct expectations. From a certain point of view, then, it was extremely beneficial the advance press screening of Death of a Unicorn followed what’s been something of a semi-regular practice lately to include an introductory message from the stars or director before the movie begins. As it happens, it was 20 March, the first day of spring. Stars Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd came on screen in a canned welcome message. Jenna congratulated everybody for making it to the vernal equinox. It’s all good-natured and, of course, Paul did his semi-awkward thing.

That’s all fine and rather fun, but it’s not where the value in the message was found. The camera movements were strange and rather abrupt. The duo were standing in front of a poorly done green screen. There was a technical rawness to it — a cheesiness — that perhaps inadvertently lowered the expectations for what followed.

In this mind, that message performed a favor.

Be warned: the visual effects in Death of a Unicorn also come across as cheesy and cheap, particularly given the movie carries a reported $70 million production budget. It's a modest sum, certainly. But it's questionable how it was spent. Nonetheless, the movie’s magic — rather like that welcome message — lies not in the presentation, but in the dialogue, the wit and the spirit.

They Live!

Ortega stars as Ridley, a withdrawn teen who’s accompanying her dad, Elliot (Rudd), on a business trip to a nature preserve. Ridley sees herself as nothing more than a "pity prop" for her widowed father, but she is the audience’s grounding point. For quite a while, she wears a little red hoody, perhaps as a symbolic gesture tying all the allegorical activity in Death of a Unicorn to its progenitors, the works of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, and more specifically to Little Red Riding Hood.

Make no mistake about it. This is an R-rated fairy tale loaded with off-kilter humor. The opening minutes — even the entirety of the first act — is deceiving with its good-natured banter and anti-corporate agenda. As the tensions rise, the on-screen violence (as poorly done as it is and a callback to the preview’s cheesy welcome message) takes center stage. The effects are low-budget horror that recall the on-set masterworks of low-budget 1980s horror, the works of Rob Bottin and John Carpenter.

As it happens, John Carpenter and "scream queen" Nancy Allen are in the thank-you list during the end credits. That also helps put all of this in perspective.

A core function of horror movies — Death of a Unicorn falls into that hybrid world of part satire, part horror — is to serve as a social commentary. John Carpenter’s movies typically had some sort of subtext underlying the gore (oftentimes cheesy gore). At the top of the list is the politically charged They Live (starring then wrestling superstar Rowdy Roddy Piper, who delivered one of the all-time great movie lines, one involving chewing bubble gum and kicking butt).

In Death of a Unicorn, the target is a fictional pharmaceutical company called Leopold Labs, which is merely a narrative tool to jab at corporate America, predatory pricing and the fleecing of consumers.

Ethics and Compliance!

Tying this all back to Ridley and Elliot, the family matriarch died from an incurable condition. It’s a source of grief for Elliot, who serves as Leopold’s VP of Ethics and Compliance. But from the get-go, it’s clear ethics and compliance are dismissible, inconsequential considerations for the lab’s senior leadership, including Elliot.

En route from the airport to the preserve, Elliot’s distracted by a call from work. He also has allergies and, while on the call, there’s a snot outbreak. Gross.

But even more gross is Elliot slamming into a unicorn and deciding the best course of action is not to call authorities or seek any sort of assistance, but instead to put the mythical creature out of its misery by way of a tire iron. Then — in complete disregard of all things "ethical" — hide it in the trunk.

So much for ethics. So much for compliance. So much for compassion.

Aside from the splattering of the unicorn’s blue blood, most of the road-kill violence is off-screen. Elliot and Ridley somehow manage to stuff the unicorn into their rental car and finally arrive at the reserve where that team of senior leadership has convened for strategy sessions.

Leading the company is Odell (Richard E. Grant), who appears to be knock-knock-knockin’ on death’s door.

Unicorns Are Real!

As fate would have it, the leadership team finds out Elliot has a unicorn in his car. Turns out, it’s not dead yet and it’s trying to buck its way out.

In the driveway of the reserve’s mansion, the pharmaceutical giant's brain trust gathers and assesses the beast that’s now lying on the pavement in front of them. It gets tiresome listening to the head honchos talk their corporate jargon. But is it that simple? As Death of a Unicorn unfolds, part of the fun is appreciating how it can be interpreted in different ways and on different levels. The most boring level is the straightforward narrative of a dead unicorn. Much more entertaining is to consider how all of this could also be a jab not just at Big Pharma but also at the Democratic Party, unleashing the pent-up frustration that’s now become a major criticism of the party in this post-Kamala era. Aggravation with how so many leaders of the party – particularly Harris – stopped speaking English in favor of "word salads," using many more words than necessary to make the simplest of points and convey the simplest of messages.

After a certain point, highly educated people start to sound really stupid — even coming across as insulting in the process — and that’s precisely how Odell, Belinda (Tea Leone) and Shepard (Will Poulter) are positioned as they try to identify the creature.

Is it a horse? What’s that appendage? Is it a tumor? Is it some sort of horn? This goes on for a little too long even as Ridley tries to force the answer: it’s a UNICORN! (Ridley further compounds things by casting the gathering as a session for "reputation laundering for the oligarchy." Huh. "Oligarchy" has been quite the popular buzzword lately.)

Death of a Unicorn seems to be one of those equal opportunity offenders. Be offended at your own peril.

Revisionist (Art) History!

Here’s another layer that deftly, slickly blends reality and fantasy.

Ridley is studying art history at college, much to the chagrin of the snooty pharma folk who seem so obliviously happy with their contributions to the fen-phen crisis of the 1990s. They also can’t keep it straight as to whether high-profile, feel-good PR stunts involve evacuating refugees or vaccinating them.

But that art history becomes invaluable to their situation. Well, it does if it’s actually recognized that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat.

In perhaps the movie’s coolest scene, Ridley watches a video online from the Museum of Metropolitan Art’s Cloisters collection way up high in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The video seems totally legit, on-brand and professionally done as it explains the significance of the collection’s seven unicorn tapestries. Then it so devilishly switches up and goes dark as it reveals a major restoration that shows the unicorn wasn’t a friendly creature after all, it was terrorizing and impaling humans, but that part had been painted over to satisfy the cultural climate of the day.

That’s a great layer of added narrative complexity. That’s taking history, playing with it and bending it to raise questions and posit (conspiracy) theories about art, religion and the social order.

That’s when the fun really begins in Death of a Unicorn.

Attention Must Be Paid!

Death of a Unicorn is the feature screenwriting and directing debut of Alex Scharfman, which makes the end result all the more impressive. The low-budget CGI should be taken for what it is, part of the movie’s charm rather than a detriment. Instead, focus on all the narrative threads and some pretty funny, quotable dialogue.

It turns out the blue blood and purple powder from the ground down unicorn horn have significant healing powers in humans. Ridley’s acne clears up; Elliot’s vision improves and his allergies disappear; and Odell’s tumors go away, restoring him to a man many years younger in appearance. It’s the fantastical fountain of youth.

But it’s also when the violence begins. There are two other unicorns out there and they want their baby returned to them.

Ridley’s knowledge of art history takes center-stage, but of course it’s ignored by those who ignore things like history and art (at least art beyond its financial component).

They’re rich and vapid, but unfortunately when they get their comeuppance, moments that should engender applause simply play out. Much like Jason Statham’s latest revenge flick, A Working Man, it’s more of a relief to see these caricatures get their due than genuine movie joy. They’re gone; good riddance. Alas, proper evil movie character demises are their own under-appreciated art form.

In keeping with the multi-layered narrative, it all comes to a close with an ending that’s also wide open for interpretation.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

In Pursuit of the New Bohemia:  Truth • Beauty • Freedom • Love
"Serving the PRM and Its Territories Worldwide Since 3 July 2000"
Site Contents Copyright © MM - MMXXV, Matthew Anderson, Unless Otherwise Noted
Privacy policy