Film Review: Death of a Unicorn

Welcome back to the blog readers. Horror has been off to an admittedly rough start in 2025, with either some non-memorable films or just straight-up bad ones. But I have a feeling it will get better as we go along, especially with Sinners and M3GAN 2.0 (both 2025) still on the docket and among some of my very most anticipated of the year. With this comedy horror (similar to last month's The Monkey (2025)) coming out, would the hot streak continue? Stick around to find out.

Death of a Unicorn was written and directed by Alex Scharfman. The film stars Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Anthony Carrigan, Jessica Hynes, Sunita Mani, Steve Park, and Richard E. Grant. In the film, a father and daughter accidentally kill a baby unicorn on their way to a summit with the head of a pharmaceutical company and his family, and the group are hunted down by its parents when they bring the baby to them.

While this film may not have been on my radar for a whole lot of time, seeing Paul Rudd in this film was enough to warrant the price of admission (thank you Regal Unlimited for the $.50 ticket). Plus Jenna Ortega really needed a win after the stinker known as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) came out. While in no way do I hate these two in the film, the film itself is admittedly a sloppy good time. Best film of the year? Not by a mile. Fun time even though the script kind of sucks? Hell yeah.

While Paul Rudd has been around way longer than this (and Ryan Reynolds's joke about his age was hilarious), my introduction to him was as Scott Lang in Ant-Man (2015) where he charmed the hell out of me as that character. And I want to talk about his character in this film for a moment, because I have thoughts. While I think Rudd's performance as the father who is willing to do anything to make sure his daughter (and maybe himself deep down) is protected from any harm is very good, the character is not memorable to me and even comes off as unlikable in places. And that is the fault of the screenplay, which I will discuss in a bit.

Speaking of bad writing, Jenna Ortega is one of those names that feels like she is poised to take over the business down the line. She has already been making a name for herself (sorry Remy) in projects like Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023), Wednesday (2022-), and the aforementioned Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. But I do think that she gives the best performance in this film. Her grounded portrayal of a young girl who is clearly dealing with a lot of trauma due to the death of her mother is really the selling point of the film for me, and getting to see the interplay between Rudd and Ortega is lovable but also so real at the same time. But the character, like Rudd's is bogged down a bunch by the screenplay.

Now we get to the main issue of this film (besides the cheesy CGI, but that can be forgiven), which is the screenplay. I have issues with the screenplay of this film for two main reasons. The first reason is because none of the characters have really any substance in my opinion. The head of the pharmaceutical company and his family are a whole bunch of bumbling idiots that literally add nothing to the script. And our main father-daughter duo is not memorable at all aside from the great performances by Rudd and Ortega. I could really not care about either of their characters because Alex Scharfman does not give me a reason to care.

The second reason I have an issue with the screenplay is with the central messaging of the film. While I do agree with what the film says about corporate greed and the class system, I think the overall messaging is wrapped in such unfunny satire that it became kind of painful to watch by the end of it. Plus, in some spots, they even double down on it to get a laugh out of the audience. Some people in my audience got baited into it, but I was left baffled with the unfunny humor.

In conclusion, Death of a Unicorn has a strong message and strong performances, but is bogged down by a borderline poor script. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.