Alex Scharfman
52 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
Jurassic Park (1993)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Visuals Themes
…some ineffectual jump scares and a few chase sequences that crib heavily from Jurassic Park without adding much to the whole “we’re being hunted by CGI beasts” routine.
…as with a lot of post-90s monster movies, the film pays several homages to Jurassic Park – including a notable giant-eye-against-the-jeep-window shot…
It feels like a fantasy Jurassic Park with a sprinkle of Orca skewering those who profit in the evilest of ways.
…evoking Xenomorphian shadows with their horse-y snouts and the Velociraptors of the Spielbergian cine-imagination across a series of cat-and-mouse games…
The dark silhouettes of a massive otherworldly creature skulking around the research facility are genuinely chilling and evoke the famous velociraptor sequence from Jurassic Park (1993).
To quote Jurassic Park’s Dr. Sattler: “You never had control; that’s the illusion.”
One scene with a unicorn was like a delicious homage to a scene from the Alien franchise.
…taps into the anti-capitalist strain in late-20th-century monster movies from Alien to Jurassic Park by tracing a clever through line from the unicorns of antiquity to the present…
Her name's one of several nods to Alien. I include among those the number plate NO57RMO after Ridley Scott's Ripley's ship.
Ortega brings echoes of her “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” performance, but, as a character named Ripley, delivers a pretty cool “Alien” tribute.
…or perhaps the critique of the elite would feel fresher if this film didn’t come years after Parasite, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu, which makes Death of a Unicorn feel a little long in the horn.
Its attempts at satire on the rich don’t ever reach the dizzying heights of movies like The Menu…
Imagine a cross between “Aftersun,” “The Menu” and “Jurassic Park” and you’ll get the idea.
“Eat the Rich” films have given us plenty of gems in the past few years (Parasite, The Menu, Knives Out), but many have become rather toothless and feel like an easy cash grab more than anything.
Whether it’s in fine-dining terror The Menu, social satire slasher Bodies Bodies Bodies, or sci-fi thriller Companion, we’re quickly learning that whenever a group of individuals get together somewhere fancy for the weekend, things are going to get dark.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Visuals Plot
Much of Act 2 gives E.T. vibes, complete with every millennial’s recurring nightmare of hazmat-suited government researchers in billowing white duct-tunnels.
But not before Ridley touches its horn, forming a vague, E.T.-style bond with the mythical beast.
With plot points eerily echoing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial mixed with a bit of the 1983 sci-fi Brainstorm…
Writer/director Alex Scharfman makes his feature debut with the umpteenth twist on "E.T.,"…
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Directed by Drew Goddard
influenced Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Themes Plot
…we even saw a small hint of such a thing in Drew Goddard's marvelous meta-horror flick "The Cabin in the Woods"…
…and The Cabin in the Woods literally drove the point home…
The Cabin in the Woods got one of its most memorable deaths from a horned horse.
The influx of such features has, simply put, reached such a fever-pitch in the wake of films like Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness,” Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” series, and Bong Joon-ho’s… well, anything, that the moment of heightened transmission for public interest seems to have died down significantly…
…or perhaps the critique of the elite would feel fresher if this film didn’t come years after Parasite, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu, which makes Death of a Unicorn feel a little long in the horn.
“Eat the Rich” films have given us plenty of gems in the past few years (Parasite, The Menu, Knives Out), but many have become rather toothless and feel like an easy cash grab more than anything.
The influx of such features has, simply put, reached such a fever-pitch in the wake of films like Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness,” Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” series, and Bong Joon-ho’s… well, anything, that the moment of heightened transmission for public interest seems to have died down significantly…
…or perhaps the critique of the elite would feel fresher if this film didn’t come years after Parasite, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu, which makes Death of a Unicorn feel a little long in the horn.
It’s the kind of conceit we have seen many times in recent years, whether through Mike White’s “The White Lotus,” Jesse Armstrong’s “Succession,” or Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.”
One might say this is A24 gunning for the Cocaine Bear audience.
And for a film boasting the most provocative title since Cocaine Bear, it equally fails to live up to the magic its title promises.
…put Death of a Unicorn in the same position as movies like M3GAN and Cocaine Bear: A cheesy genre flick with enough slickness to have some mainstream appeal.
Ready or Not (2019)
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
influenced Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Themes Plot
…this one heavily reminds me of one of my favorites, 2019’s Ready or Not, with its message of rich people doing horrible things to maintain their wealth using both genres to great effect…
Death of a Unicorn was a delightful, if slightly gory surprise, reminding me a little of Ready or Not (2019) and Violent Night (2022) with its treatment of the 0.01% without going fully swinging the other way with a proletariat “for the people” message.
…like a Ready or Not with fairy-tale creatures instead of infernal bargains.
The influx of such features has, simply put, reached such a fever-pitch in the wake of films like Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness,” Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” series, and Bong Joon-ho’s… well, anything, that the moment of heightened transmission for public interest seems to have died down significantly…
“Eat the Rich” films have given us plenty of gems in the past few years (Parasite, The Menu, Knives Out), but many have become rather toothless and feel like an easy cash grab more than anything.
Since the release of whodunnit Knives Out in 2019, we’ve seen a flurry of glossy one-location productions with various genre twists on the format.
…the director forgot the best lesson he learned making Jurassic Park from his early creature feature, Jaws: less is more. Jaws still works today because it allows for a slow buildup that raises audience apprehension about the shark.
…borrowing liberally from Spielberg to instill a sense of mythological menace. “It looks like the shark fin from Jaws,” Ortega previously told Den of Geek.
I loved the deeply sad and surprisingly disturbing animated children’s film The Last Unicorn.
Peter S. Beagle warned us in his novel The Last Unicorn prior to it being made into the 1982 animated classic…
Here it misses a trick that the creators of Gremlins or the twisted minds behind the gratuitously violent Happy Tree Friends understood: adorable creatures that turn monstrous are even more frightening than the grotesque.
Unlike Gremlins the rules of the supernatural set-up aren't delivered but discovered…
You have Bong Joon-Ho's Mickey 17, which discusses the exploitation of living things for greed…
These philosophical questions are now starting to creep into our art as well, most recently with this year’s Mickey 17 and now just weeks later with the release of Death of a Unicorn.
The scientists, Dr. Song (Steve Park) and Dr. Bhatia (Sunita Mani), may remind avid moviegoers of the scientists in “Mickey 17” (2025) for sacrificing their empathy for work, which makes them oblivious to their safety or ethics.
The foundation has all the flavors of an SNL Digital Short or a Robot Chicken segment.
It feels like a fantasy Jurassic Park with a sprinkle of Orca skewering those who profit in the evilest of ways.
James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Directed by Henry Selick
influenced Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Themes
Like Matilda or James and the Giant Peach, Death of a Unicorn chronicles a young person inhabiting a world of grotesque adults who are inevitably no match for the fantastical.
Like Matilda or James and the Giant Peach, Death of a Unicorn chronicles a young person inhabiting a world of grotesque adults who are inevitably no match for the fantastical.
The film has a carefree nature, much like Anaconda did in 1997.
In fact, like many recent fantasies which have followed the doggedly realist route of Christopher Nolan’s Batman series, the unicorn has undergone grey-ification.