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Though corrupting beloved, harmless figures from childhood is a tradition that has existed since those childhood figures themselves—a tradition ranging from alt co*ics to Newgrounds-era Flash animation—there’s been a recent gold rush on giving cutesy icons a horror-friendly bloodlust. Most of these IP grabs rest on their premise. An R-rated Winnie-The-Pooh? No need to keep writing after that. Killer unicorn flick Death Of A Unicorn plays in a similar space, but with enough effort and self-awareness to entertain beyond its simple contrarian premise. Embracing its late-night creature-feature stupidity, Death Of A Unicorn doles out the requisite notes of suspense and empathy, but wants nothing more than to hilariously rend its ensemble of greedy pharmaceutical clowns limb from limb.

And rend it does. Though debut filmmaker Alex Scharfman’s bookends sag and drag, finding dead air from the first moment distracted father Elliot (Paul Rudd) and daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) crash their car straight into a unicorn, there’s gory fun to be had once the concept gets all four legs under it. This fun primarily co*es at the expense of the Leopold family, whom the daddy-daughter duo have traveled into the wilderness to see: Loaded pharma patriarch Odell (Richard E. Grant), on his deathbed looking to bring in Elliot as a partner; his wife Belinda (Téa Leoni), scheming behind her politeness; and their blowhard failson Shepard (Will Poulter), confidently wrong and looking like he just stepped off a yacht. Though Elliot spends plenty of time sucking up and playing nice, the dead unicorn in his rental car’s trunk (a faux pas in any situation) undermines his efforts. It just won’t stay dead.

This discovery, and the ensuing effort to loot the mythical creature like it was slain by a corporatized D&D party, leads to foreseeable problems. “Human hubris around incredible creatures” forms the foundation of plenty of films, but in particular, much of Jurassic Park’s DNA has been slurped from amber and modified with unicorns rather than frogs. The unicorns have Velociraptor talons on their hooves! The miraculous healing properties of their blood and the psychedelic magic of their horns add wrinkles to the formula, but Death Of A Unicorn is basically a family of Wayne Knights getting fucked up by Dilophosauruses for 104 minutes.

Or at least, the better part of 104 minutes. There’s still a surprising amount of filler, with Ortega left out to dry; Ridley is saddled with the job of being the levelheaded, goodhearted person nobody will listen to, even after the death count starts mounting. Rudd also struggles in his role, unable to be slimy enough to believably go along with the Leopold plot—which eventually evolves from “exploit this one unicorn” to “kill all unicorns.” He feels miscast around other actors more than happy to ham up their villainy, especially Poulter, who steals the film with his matter-of-fact proclamations. Barry standout Anthony Carrigan makes the most of rolling his eyes as the family’s down-to-earth butler, but there’s very little class co*mentary here. This boneheaded movie’s got a dull point, but at least a lot of rich jerks get murderized by fanged, stab-happy unicorns.

Poulter and the unicorns spearhead the zaniness that drives Death Of A Unicorn’s most successful, madcap, midnight-movie tone. A late-night hunting trip isn’t quite wild enough, but the unicorns storming into the Leopolds’ mansion is. It’s just outrageous enough that the far better (and far better-looking) Jurassic Park raptor scenes hardly co*e to mind. The critters themselves are best at night, and in the uneven light that their electromagnetic-interfering horns make flicker; seen in full, the cartoonish realism from FX house Zoic Studios never quite fits the film. But when the monsters are simply goring folks through walls or stampeding through ornate hallways, the job gets done just fine.

Similarly, Death Of A Unicorn works best when it charges into the funny-nasty splatter horror, light and dumb and gross, at a full gallop. When it slows things down to a trot, attempting to beef up the emotional connection between Elliot and Ridley, it starts reeking of the glue factory. This is a movie where killer unicorns tear a person in half. It doesn’t need 15 minutes of heart-to-hearts between the family members—especially when even that feels like trying to copy from Jurassic Park’s paper. Yet, Death Of A Unicorn is an enjoyable enough trifle, a novelty with enough oomph behind it to separate it from the truly mercenary parodies and place it among a slightly better class of film (SYFY Originals).

Director: Alex Scharfman

Writer: Alex Scharfman

Starring: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant

Release Date: March 28, 2025