Death Of A Unicorn

Unique Horn

Death Of A Unicorn
Directed by Alex Scharfman
USA/Hungary 2025
A24
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Definitely some minor spoilers here.

Death Of A Unicorn is a bit of an unusual film, it seems to me. At first I thought it was a little like one of those movies that Hollywood sometimes churns out as being an ‘independent movie’ when it’s about as far from one as you could get on a truly independent budget… but the studio is still trying to sell it as a quirky, fun and unusual movie to appeal to a specific kind of audience. And I’d normally avoid such things if it weren’t for the fact that, despite seeming to try to be all those things so fiercely… it is, actually, also a genuinely quirky, fun and unusual movie.

The story involves the oft times brilliant Paul Rudd as Elliot, a lawyer who has been invited around to a hugely wealthy family’s retreat in the mountains to seal a deal to serve said family, with the pharmaceutical CO father of the family (played by Richard E. Grant) near death from cancer. He is also accompanied by his daughter Ridley, played by the equally brilliant Jenna Ortega (who was so good in Beeteljuice Beeteljuice, reviewed here). They are here for the weekend but, on the way, they accidentally hit a unicorn with their car and, after trying to kill it to put it out of its misery, Elliot and Ridley get sprayed in its blood. This has the effect of clearing Ridley’s skin condition and fixing Elliot’s vision so he doesn’t need his glasses (among other things). They stuff the fabled creature into the back of the car and Elliot tries to get in good with the family, consisting of Grant, Tea Leoni, Will Poulter and various servants and doctors including Jessica Hynes as a personal bodyguard/chief of security. Then the unicorn wakes up and is put out of its misery again with a gun shot to the head… before the family discover the medicinal properties of its ground up horn, which cures the father of his cancer. The unicorn then becomes their main concern as a money spinner but, the unicorn’s mum and dad are on their way to take revenge on the humans… among other things.

And it is a nice little film. I was torn at first because the villainous, shallow, filthy rich family are given such over the top performances by their respective actors that it just felt like they were all having too much of a good time hamming it up at the expense of the audience, for a while. However, I can only think this must have been a deliberate instruction from the director because the characters who are not ‘all about the money’ and who are more decent types, all seem to come across as naturalistic and genuine in comparison. Rudd is delicately balancing a half in/ half out relationship with the human antagonists and Ortega, as the voice of reason, anchors the film when things threaten to get overly pretentious with the majority of the rest of the cast. Ortega also has a special relationship with the unicorns, it turns out… I’ll leave you to discover that element of the film for yourself.

It’s also a film where the depiction of right and wrong in terms of where the characters’ respective moral compasses are set is not necessarily something that will save them from the wrath of the unicorns. A doctor played by Sunita Mani, for instance, definitely has the audience sympathies I would say, despite being torn between her own humanity and the best financial interests of the family. This doesn’t stop her from being despatched in a way which would mean the police, who discover the bloodbath at the end of the movie, wouldn’t have to look in a few different places to recover her remains.

The film is nicely shot and edited with some amazing visual effects. The unicorns are, I can only assume, fully CGI but they come across as great personalities… and mostly terrifying. This is a 15 rated film in the UK and for good reason. Don’t bring your kids along to this one because the unicorns are quite ferocious and you will see some nicely gnarly scenes of such things as unicorn horn impaling and people being ripped apart (sometimes a thrilling combination of both) or, for example, having their heads burst under hoof. These unicorns have more in common with the ones depicted in the second Shazam! movie (reviewed here) than anything you might get in kiddie literature.

Also, it has a quite nice ending with a little ambiguity, perhaps, as to the fates of a couple of the characters but with a sense of positivity and, in one character, a certain sense of redemption for what’s gone before. So I have to admit I quite liked Death Of A Unicorn, which I was lucky enough to see four days before it opened officially, at a special preview screening. Very much worth a watch, I would say.