TAGGED AS: Comedy, Horror, movies
Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega star in the horror-comedy Death of a Unicorn, which just premiered at the SXSW Film Festival to a mostly positive reception. The first reviews of the upcoming A24 release focus on the humor, gore, and surprising amount of heart, comparing Alex Scharfman’s feature directorial debut to a certain classic blockbuster from 32 years ago. While there is some disagreement on various elements of the movie, nearly all of the reviews acknowledge that fans of this sort of thing will be satisfyingly entertained.
Here’s what critics are saying about Death of a Unicorn:
With an all-star cast and a hilarious premise, Death of a Unicorn is yet another hit for A24.
— Rachel Leishman, The Mary Sue
Writer-director Alex Scharfman’s feature debut is a triumphant success that truly knows its audience and delivers constant entertainment from start to finish.
— Abe Friedtanzer, Awards Buzz
Death of a Unicorn fits squarely within the indie studio’s bizart-house brand, using the title tragedy as license to make a highly eccentric and unapologetically grisly horror movie.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
The studio isn’t by-the-books when it comes to what it releases and the studio’s films can range from incredibly dramatic to incredibly weird. Death of a Unicorn falls into the latter category. It’s a fairly wild concept that is paired with even wilder onscreen deaths by unicorns (as though we expected anything less considering the title).
— Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant
A horror-comedy that is infinitely more well-crafted and thoughtful than it has any business being, writer/director Alex Scharfman’s delightful debut Death of a Unicorn is the type of B movie that feels like it’s tapped into something truly magical all its own.
— Chase Hutchinson, The Playlist
Scharfman treats this unicorn bit with sincere seriousness, aiming for relevance on the rapacious state of late-stage capitalism satirized in such recent hits as The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Knives Out: Glass Onion, Parasite, and Succession, among others.
— Adrian Horton, Guardian
Scharfman’s acerbic script and the luxurious single-location mansion setting should immediately recall analogous films like The Menu and Ready or Not, particularly as Death of a Unicorn eventually veers into grisly violence.
— Trace Sauveur, Paste Magazine
Death of a Unicorn makes an abrupt shift from witty class satire — something akin to Saltburn, with its posh location and self-absorbed aristocracy — to full-blown monster movie…most indebted to Jurassic Park.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
Death of a Unicorn was clearly inspired by Jurassic Park — I swear there’s even a music cue nod late in the film during a sequence that recalls the raptor attack — in both its structure and theme.
— Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
It has a clever sense of humor and a surprising amount of heart hidden away underneath all the many genre shenanigans it gets up to that come together to recall Steven Spielberg’s iconic Jurassic Park.
— Chase Hutchinson, The Playlist
Much of Act 2 gives E.T. vibes…and the film’s overt nods to 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park keep audience members of our generation on our toes.
The filmmaker cribs liberally from the Jurassic Park franchise, from unicorn anatomy details to The Lost World’s baby t-rex plot, further robbing the concept of originality.
It’s Cocaine Bear with unicorns, which might be the highest compliment I can give any film.
There are parts of Death of a Unicorn where it seems like it’s falling into the Cocaine Bear trap, of a movie thinking its joke premise is enough to work on its own.
Although it doesn’t necessarily stand out from others in the genre beyond its magical premise, it boasts a strong ensemble and plenty of amusing punchlines.
— Trace Sauveur, Paste Magazin
By large, this beastly feature is exactly what you would expect it to be: fashioning itself different but in fact much like the others. A unicorn, this is not.
— Adrian Horton, Guardian
This film has a wild premise and dives fully into it.
— Abe Friedtanzer, Awards Buzz
It’s batsh*t insane. Yet, against all odds and reason, it works.
— Aaron Peterson, The Hollywood Outsider
As first features go, Death of a Unicorn is considerably more ambitious and imaginative than so much of what studios greenlight these days, which goes a fair distance to excuse some of its flaws.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
You’ll get exactly what you want from a movie with such a bizarre concept.
— Nate Richard, Collider
Although writer-director Alex Scharfman makes a big swing…Death of a Unicorn struggles to live up to its bold premise.
— Glenn Garner, Deadline Hollywood Daily
The idea behind Death of a Unicorn is a novel one, and Scharfman’s commitment to over-the-top spectacle is commendable.
— Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting
The problem is that the idea that fuels the movie — wouldn’t it be funny if a unicorn went on a murder rampage? — is a joke with a limited lifespan.
Scharfman’s script cleverly taps into any number of frustrations swirling in the zeitgeist at the moment.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
[It’s] a fantastic script filled with pointed and funny dialogue.
— Abe Friedtanzer, Awards Buzz
I’m not sure if this script will land in the Library of Congress, but it’s nearly two hours of frenzied unicorn carnage and it’s a corny-horny blast.
— Jessi Cape, Austin Chronicle
For a movie with a nearly two-hour runtime and a bonkers title with the plot to match, the action kicks off awfully late into the movie.
— Glenn Garner, Deadline Hollywood Daily
The road getting to the gory action is a bumpy one.
— Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting
A laugh riot.
— Abe Friedtanzer, Awards Buzz
Genuinely hilarious.
— Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant
This film is over the top and absolutely ridiculous…I was laughing until my sides hurt.
— Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky
[There are] many darkly fun punchlines that, just as the film never overplays its hand, only grow more wonderfully absurd.
— Chase Hutchinson, The Playlist
The satire feels incredibly timely.
— Nate Richard, Collider
The picture’s funniest moments derive from jump scares and grisly impalings, although their impact is blunted by the fact that the underwhelmingly out-of-touch Leopold family aren’t so comically loathsome that we relish their comeuppance.
— Tim Grierson, Screen International
The father-and-daughter dynamic between the two successfully manages to tug on your heartstrings.
Scharfman attempts to infuse this friction-fueled [father-daughter] relationship as the emotional backbone of the story, but Dad is such a jerk that the inevitable reconciliation feels unearned.
There is also a genuinely heartfelt throughline about how Elliot is not sticking up for what’s right in the naive hope that the wealthy family will reward them.
There is also a genuinely heartfelt throughline about how Elliot is not sticking up for what’s right in the naive hope that the wealthy family will reward them.
[It] left me significantly more emotional than Will Poulter’s character.
It offers plenty to chew on about how doing the right thing even in the worst of circumstances may actually lead to redemption — while the reverse is also completely true.
If director and writer Alex Scharfman wanted to just make a bloody movie, it would have been just as fun to watch. But the themes for fatherhood, grief, and a commentary on the insufferable 1% make this movie more than that.
— Rachel Leishman, The Mary Sue
While the film touches on some serious issues through a humorous lens — like addiction, price-gouging and science deniers — the message felt uneven, hidden beneath a comedy-horror that struggles to find its footing.
There’s a slightly undercooked commentary here about how the wealthy view everything, even what others consider impossible, as a means to profit, but it’s there if you look deep enough.
It’s so focused on the suspense and tension between the two families that it doesn’t dig too much into its great themes…barely explored beyond the surface.
This movie is so blatant in its class commentary (and so morally consistent with its unicorn violence) that it becomes a problem.
As a satire of capitalism, Death is fairly toothless.
It turns out there’s a satisfying sense of schadenfreudian indulgence to watching a group of rich assholes get what’s coming to them in a world where that increasingly doesn’t happen.
One particular death had the audience clapping, which is exactly the reaction it needed.
People get what they deserve in a more than satisfying way.
It really is fun to watch these doomed people succumb to bloody deaths.
Seeing the greedy elite get taken down in brutal, gory fashion should be far more satisfying than this is.
This film contains a tremendous amount of gore but it all feels completely necessary and appropriate.
It’s all quite gruesome fun, but it isn’t just relying on the gore to grab you.
While I wish it went a little harder at times, I fully love the unicorn carnage that is unleashed.
The gore [is too] few and far between…we came for the unicorn bloodbath.
The unicorn puppets are delightfully surreal.
The creature design is excellent and I was breathtaken when we got close-ups of the unicorns. They’re majestic and horrifying at once.
The designs are impeccable, and whenever there is a practical effect or puppetry used, it almost resonates as a mythical being brought to life…the film unfortunately falters whenever Scharfman and his team devolve into CGI.
The CGI isn’t great, but it feels as if that fits the style of the movie.
While clearly CGI creations, not only are the effects mostly pretty good, but Scharfman smartly doesn’t show too much of them too early and instead leaves them lurking in the shadows or bellowing from afar.
The weakest element here is also the film’s most essential — namely, how the unicorns look…these computer-generated horse-monsters come of looking inconsistent and unconvincing.
The CGI is so janky in the first half that I wondered if the film was even complete at its SXSW premiere…it’s kind of insane to consider how the industry move to CGI has resulted in a creature feature that doesn’t look as realistic as Jurassic Park did over three decades ago.
Ultimately, it’s Will Poulter who steals the show…a delight at every moment.
Poulter is without a doubt the biggest standout of the cast as Shepard, confidently mixing the comic timing he’s shown in movies like We’re the Millers as well as convincingly playing a douchebag, which he’s shown before in Midsommar.
The best part of this film is certainly Will Poulter’s Shephard…maybe it’s just Poulter’s performance, but he’s one of the few parts of the movie’s straightforward class narrative that feels surprising.
There’s no doubt that Poulter is the MVP, fully fleshing out his character’s absurdity and firing off numerous nonsensical quips with the utmost confidence.
The standout for most viewers is likely to be Will Poulter as the obnoxious heir to the Leopold throne…high praise also to Barry star Carrigan, who plays the servant Griff with such wonderful world-weariness that he gets a laugh every time he’s on screen.
The other scene stealer is Anthony Carrigan as the family’s put-upon servant Griff.
Comedy is one of the film’s best qualities, but it’s also a hindrance because it doesn’t let up enough to make room for more meaningful interactions.
The only time the movie ever really lags is with building tension…the movie mainly only ever feels like a comedy.
Death of a Unicorn cast well. The problem is that very few of them are likable in any way. Even Rudd struggles here.
Death of a Unicorn doesn’t connect all its thematic dots. Most of all, some of the material involving Ridley and Elliot’s grief feels shallow, a way to try and inject emotion into a flick that could have been a pure survival tale between the haves and the have-nots.
It’s pure popcorn entertainment.
I had an absolute blast, which is the most I could have asked for.
An ambitious movie that is as crowd-pleasing as it is buzzing with energy…incredibly entertaining.
If you want to watch a bunch of silly rich people get murdered by a unicorn, this is the film for you. And if you want to watch Jenna Ortega co-lead a horror/comedy slasher movie again, you’re gonna have a good time.
It’s silly fun at a time when it feels like we could all use an escape.
[There was] spontaneous eruptions of applause from the audience at the SXSW premiere anytime the unicorns dispatched one of the Leopolds, which just goes to show that a fed-up public continues to view executing pharm-oligarchs as fair payback.
[It has] the real potential to be a modern monster movie classic whose legs could easily see it sprinting into being a routine rewatch every single year.
Death of a Unicorn opens in theaters on March 28, 2025.
