Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Directed by Alex Scharfman
A father and daughter accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.
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What critics say influenced Death of a Unicorn
…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.”
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 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.
Honestly, the whole plot of the movie feels like a knock-off version of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, just with a lot grislier deaths in this than in Spielberg’s original monster movie. As with the 1993 classic, there is an emotional element to this film involving Rudd and Ortega that does land well…
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.
Nor are they the graceful and tragic trophies of Darkness (Tim Curry) in Legend (1985).
…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.
…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.
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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.
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 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.
…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.
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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.
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…