Eat-the rich satires go back to the adopted dinosaurs in the cinema, from Luis Buñuel to Jean Renoir, but they are as in demand as, as thanks to the worlds, desperately populated by rich deceit, created by Rian Johnson in his reversing and loved “Knives out“Movies. That many contemporary filmmakers are eager to jump on that tradition thanks to the later film’s streaming (and no longer particular theater) Success has led to results both punching and effective (“ready or not”) and seriously undercooked (“menu”).
Enter Alex Scharfmans ”A unicorn“Into that battle, an annoying unpleasant broadcast of Big Pharma and the” Jurassic Park “scale tent poles that have no of the tooth or width of any of the films I just mentioned.
Here, on the way to a weekend’s retreat in Canada to become a power of attorney to a pharmaceutical billionaire (Richard E. Grant), the Feckless Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his gene Z, Internet-War Poled Daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) Hit the mistake and kill a unicorn with his rental car. But not before Ridley gets the chance to touch his psychedelia-inducing horn and form mentally linked forces of their own to the mythical creature.
The unicorn’s radiance has the power to heal everything from Ridley’s teenage aak to Elliot’s poor vision, which transforms this unicorn into an inevitable potential cash cow for Pharma Ceo Odell Leopold, his pleated short -term son Shepard (Will Poulter), and newly blasted wife (téi). This, and more, they learn when they arrive at Leopold’s many-ered goods, where the company’s lawyer Elliot negotiates to take a significant partnership in the company because Odell dies of terminal cancer.
But the unicorn population that largely runs around the wild who surrounds Leopolds’ Posh, separated ranch association is no one too satisfied with the fact that one of their tribe has now died of oligarchic hands. And so an uprising follows where the rest of the unicorns attack and eliminate the Leopoldarna in a cruel way, making a confused mix of horror and comedy, constantly a tricky knife edge (or unicorn to dance) to dance. The author/director Scharfman, whose function directs the debut team with, including production companies, Ari Aster’s Square Peg, offers a potentially exciting concept but which only scratches the surface of the unicorn Lore, or the characters living in this filmOr the creature contains this one wants to emulate.
Leoni seems to have fun in a jumpsuit and bumped up the hairstyle, spotting his son Shepard, who recovers from drug addiction, which ever lost the children to rich parents with nothing better to do is. “Barry” Breakout Anthony Carrigan gets the majority of the best laughs in the movie, here playing a put-upon Butler who, when we are asked to unlock Leopolds’ gate for a moment of special crisis, is told by Belina, “years of service, and we haven’t asked anything about you!” But upstairs downstairs the satire goes only as deep as the one, when the Leopoldarna becomes greedy about the unicorn’s potential to stop their patriarch’s cancer, its blood something they may be able to pomp for the rich billionaires in the rest of the world for a disease fine.
Ridley, traumatized by cancer death for her mother and is mostly regarded as a waste of those around her for conducting a degree in the terrible major of art history, knows one thing or two about the mythology behind these friendly rainbow creatures. If only someone would listen to her! It gets too late when Shepard realizes that a fair -haired virgin like Ridley may be the one who saves them, and Unicorn’s surrounding Leopold’s home and goes in for a series of “Final Destination” level.
It is difficult to see if the digital effects are intentional and serve to remind that this is a horror comedy, not a horror Film. There is a certain hilarity with death, like when the poor Dr. Bhatia (Sunita Mani) encounters an unexpected fate. And maybe, even, some satisfaction when these people’s self -wiped directly from their faces and released from the inside. “A unicorn“Not cheap out on the intestine spills out of bodies or sudden strikingly striking people immediately wiping out people like the movie has trained us to hate.
The slope between genres, whether horror or comedy or cordial dad-daughter movie, is becoming more transparent and frustrating as the film tries to win our hearts back with sentimental weepie moments in the last act of the film. The problem is that we do not care about who lives or die, unless it is, of course, these horrible rich people become stabbed to death by Unicorn Horns.
The only devices that this movie makes you feel for are its creatures, but incredibly realized that they are. Was it the movie’s points? Scharfman can see people as pitiful creatures under a magnifying glass intended to evaporate and be punished for their hubris, but his point of view is much less clear.
Rating: C-
“Death of a Unicorn” premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. A24 Releases the movie in theaters on Friday 28 March.
Want to keep you updated on IndieWire’s movie Reviews And critical thoughts? Subscribe here To our recently launched newsletter, in review by David Ehrlich, where our main film critic and Head Review’s editor rounds off the best reviews, streaming elections and offers some new Musings, all only available for subscribers.
