This week, Hollywood serves up another “eat-the-rich” horror-comedy—because we haven’t seen enough of those lately—with Death of a Unicorn. It’s a tale as old as time: a working stiff trying to climb the corporate ladder, a billionaire with more money than sense, and a magical creature that gets run over by a car. Yes, a unicorn. We’re not talking about some glittery, rainbow-farting pony for a six-year-old’s birthday, though I wouldn’t put it past these Hollywood schmucks to try that next. This is a dark, gore-splattered A24 flick, so brace yourself for a lot of blood and a lot of eye-rolling political commentary.
The setup is simple: a corporate lawyer, Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd, still looking like he hasn’t aged a day since Clueless, the lucky stiff), is driving his sullen, activist teenage daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega, forever playing the “goth who cares too much” role), to the remote, ultra-rich compound of his dying pharmaceutical boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). The plan is for Elliot to secure his future. The execution is an immediate dumpster fire, as they hit a unicorn—a real, actual, mythical unicorn—on the road. What follows is a messy attempt to hide the car-wrecked mythical beast from the Leopolds, who, naturally, only see a walking, or rather, dead, pharmaceutical goldmine. Expect the usual commentary about the 1% and how greed is bad, which, frankly, I could have told you without a two-hour movie featuring angry, demonic horses.
Review by Ben Dover
I went into Death of a Unicorn hoping for a decent monster movie, maybe something with some laughs. Instead, I got a sloppy, over-budget lecture with some occasional, bloody impalements. The central joke—that a greedy pharmaceutical family would immediately try to monetize the horn and blood of a unicorn—is pretty funny for about five minutes. Then they spend the next hour and a half beating you over the head with the subtlety of a tire iron, which, coincidentally, is what Paul Rudd uses on the poor beast. The rich people are evil, get it? They have no souls! They exploit everything! My Lord, if I wanted a political cartoon this unsubtle, I’d just watch the nightly news.
Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega are the only saving grace, trying to navigate this mess as a father and daughter who clearly haven’t figured out how to talk to each other since the mother passed. Rudd plays the desperate-to-please corporate drone perfectly, and Ortega gives you that signature, deadpan teenager look that makes you want to smack the gum right out of her mouth. The rest of the cast, though, are just pantomime villains. Richard E. Grant, who I usually love, just hams it up as the dying, greedy CEO Odell. And Will Poulter as his spoiled, snorting-unicorn-horn-powder son? He’s the kind of entitled punk who makes me nostalgic for the good old days when rich kids just joined the Army instead of becoming “visual thinkers.” They’re so cartoonishly evil, they make Snidely Whiplash look like a philanthropist.
The movie tries to be too many things at once: a creature feature, a horror flick, a dark comedy, and a serious drama about father-daughter grief. It succeeds at none of them completely. The horror elements are jarring. One minute, you’re chuckling at an awkward family dinner where a billionaire is trying to hide his cancer, and the next, a giant, ugly unicorn is turning some schmuck into a human shish kebab. The pacing is all over the place. The film is barely under two hours, but it felt longer than the last DMV wait I had. And the ending? Don’t even get me started. They try to tack on some “magic of forgiveness and family” nonsense that completely negates all the bloody mayhem that came before it. Honestly, just let the angry unicorn stomp everyone. It would have been a better ending.
And speaking of the unicorns: these are not the gentle, sparkly creatures of old. They’re terrifying, blood-soaked monstrosities. Which, fine, that’s a clever twist. But the CGI is shockingly janky for an A24 picture. I’ve seen better special effects on the SyFy channel’s movie of the week. Maybe they spent all the money on the actors and figured a slightly blurry, giant horse monster was “artsy.” Give me a break. Overall, it’s a solid premise that crumbles under the weight of its own attempt to be profound. If you want a movie about the evils of Big Pharma, just read the damn newspaper. If you want a good monster movie, go re-watch Jaws. At least the shark didn’t lecture me about late-stage capitalism.
Starring
- Paul Rudd as Elliot Kintner: A corporate lawyer and widowed father desperate for a promotion to secure his daughter’s financial future, which puts him in the pocket of a monstrous pharmaceutical CEO. Still looks thirty, which is just unfair.
- Jenna Ortega as Ridley Kintner: Elliot’s activist, goth-adjacent teenage daughter who has a conscience and, thanks to touching the unicorn’s horn, a spiritual connection to the magical creatures. She’s the only character who feels like a normal human being, which means she spends the whole movie brooding.
- Richard E. Grant as Odell Leopold: The terminally ill billionaire CEO of Leopold Laboratories and Elliot’s boss. He is pure, unadulterated, money-hungry evil. A walking personification of everything wrong with the world, apparently.
- Téa Leoni as Belinda Leopold: Odell’s socialite wife who is just as opportunistic as her husband and son. She’s the kind of rich lady who thinks a non-profit means “a great tax write-off.”
- Will Poulter as Shepard Leopold: The Leopolds’ entitled, spoiled, rich-kid son who fancies himself a hunter and archer, and quickly finds a recreational use for unicorn parts. He is the personification of “dope.”
- Anthony Carrigan as Griff: The put-upon, stoic head of staff at the Leopold estate. He looks like he’s seen a hundred rich-people meltdowns, but a killer unicorn is a new one.
Special Effects and Music
The special effects are a mixed bag. The CGI for the unicorns, particularly the adult, angry ones, is underwhelming and stiff. They look like something a college student made on a borrowed computer. The gore, however, is great. When a unicorn decides to take someone out, it’s messy, brutal, and completely over-the-top, which is exactly what I came for. The sight of a grown man impaled on a horn is a beautiful, ridiculous thing.
The music by Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco is fine. It does the job. It has some of that sweeping, “creature-feature” sound that is clearly trying to imitate John Williams’ work on Jurassic Park. It hits all the required notes for “ominous build-up” and “screaming while running.” I didn’t hate it, but I won’t be rushing out to buy the soundtrack. It’s background noise, just like most of the dialogue.
Rating
3 out of 5 Stars
(Three stars. It’s just okay. The kills are good, but the message is annoying.)
Complete Synopsis and Plot Breakdown
Elliot Kintner, a corporate lawyer, is trying to impress his incredibly rich and dying boss, Odell Leopold, the CEO of Leopold Laboratories, to secure a high-paying proxy position. He brings his estranged, grief-stricken daughter, Ridley, on a trip to Odell’s remote, massive estate in the Canadian Rockies. During a strained, bickering drive, Elliot, momentarily distracted, accidentally hits a young unicorn with his SUV.
The unicorn is critically injured. Ridley, full of the moral outrage of her generation, touches the creature’s horn and is immediately overwhelmed by strange, cosmic, beautiful visions. Elliot, in a panic to hide the evidence and put the animal out of its misery, bludgeons the small unicorn with a tire iron. Both Elliot and Ridley are splattered with the creature’s iridescent, purple blood. They load the body into the trunk, planning to bury it later. Immediately, the unicorn’s blood begins to show its miraculous healing properties: Elliot’s chronic allergies vanish, and Ridley’s acne clears up.
Upon arriving at the luxurious, isolated compound, they meet Odell, his socialite wife Belinda, and their feckless, archery-enthusiast son, Shepard. The family, especially Odell, is thrilled when they discover the injured unicorn is still alive in the car. Seeing an opportunity for a miracle cure and, more importantly, a monumental profit, the Leopolds’ assistant, Shaw, eventually shoots the unicorn. They quickly mobilize their private team of scientists to begin harvesting the creature’s parts. Odell, who is suffering from late-stage cancer, is immediately cured after injecting a concoction derived from the grated unicorn horn.
Ridley, appalled by the commodification of a magical creature, researches medieval tapestries and folklore, realizing that mistreating a unicorn will invite a severe, violent response. Her warnings are dismissed by the Leopolds, who only see a massive cash cow. Unbeknownst to the greedy family, the unicorn’s horn is acting as a signal, summoning its parents—two much larger, fiercer, and very angry adult unicorns.
The carnage begins as the parent unicorns arrive, breaching the security of the compound and savagely attacking the staff and scientists, including Dr. Song and Shaw. Odell, now cured of cancer and feeling immortal, organizes a hunting party, forcing Elliot to join them. Shepard, meanwhile, gets a taste of the unicorn’s power by snorting some of the ground-up horn, which gives him a delusional god complex and a desire to take the entire horn for himself. He forces Dr. Bhatia to saw off the rest of the foal’s horn, only for Ridley to realize the foal was never truly dead.
The hunting party is ambushed by the unicorns, resulting in several brutal deaths, including Odell and Shaw. Elliot returns to the estate, and the final survivors—Elliot, Ridley, Belinda, and Shepard—are trapped in the mansion. The unicorns breach the house, killing Belinda. Shepard, armed with his compound bow and a stolen vial of unicorn powder, attempts to use Ridley, the “pure-hearted maiden,” as bait to capture the beasts. Elliot sacrifices himself to save Ridley, stealing the severed horn to lure one of the parents away, but is mortally wounded.
Ridley confronts the unicorns, and her genuine remorse and lack of greed make them docile. She mourns her father, and in a final act of true magic, the parent unicorns use their power to heal their foal and, miraculously, revive Elliot. They then vanish peacefully. The Kintners are left covered in blood amongst a pile of dead rich people. The estate’s butler, Griff, returns with the police, who immediately and understandably arrest Elliot and Ridley as suspects, completely unable to comprehend their insane story. The final scene shows the Kintners being driven away in handcuffs, catching a glimpse of the powerful, beautiful unicorns running free in the wilderness.
Famous Quotes from the Movie
- “This is a pharmaceutical goldmine! We’ve got to find a way to monetize the… the… whatever-it-is.” – Odell Leopold
- “You hit a mythical creature with a rental car! That’s the most ‘you’ thing I could possibly imagine.” – Ridley Kintner
- “It cured my allergies. It cleared up your acne. We’ve found the fountain of youth, Elliot, and it’s roadkill!” – Elliot Kintner
- “They’re not glittery. They’re fanged. You look at the tapestries, Dad. They’re a warning against hubris!” – Ridley Kintner
- “I am a visual thinker! And right now, I’m visualizing a world where I’m immortal!” – Shepard Leopold
Notes from the Movie
Interesting Facts
- A24’s Dark Fairy Tale: The film was produced by A24, the studio known for its unconventional horror and independent films, positioning it as an “elevated” creature feature.
- Jurassic Park Homage: The film’s structure and theme—the wealthy trying to monetize a dangerous, rediscovered creature and paying the ultimate price—is a deliberate nod to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.
- Mythology vs. Capitalism: Director Alex Scharfman based the dark nature of the unicorns on medieval folklore and tapestries, where the creatures were sometimes depicted as dangerous, powerful beasts, rather than the modern, cuddly version.
- The Sackler Satire: The Leopold family, who run Leopold Laboratories and seek to profit from a miraculous cure, are a thinly veiled satire of real-world pharmaceutical dynasties.
- Grief and Magic: The film uses the father-daughter’s reconciliation, spurred by their shared trauma and a spiritual connection with the unicorn, as a core emotional arc to contrast the pure greed of the Leopold family.