Movie Review: Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Synopsis: Widowed attorney Elliott Kintner and his teenage daughter, Ridley, are invited to stay the weekend at the estate of his boss, Odell Leopold, to discuss serving as the dying Leopold's board proxy at a pharmaceutical company. While driving through a nature preserve the Canadian Rockies and distracted by both his allergies and his phone, Elliott strikes a young unicorn and later brutally puts it out of its misery with a tire iron before putting it in his car so he can secretly bury it. When the creature comes back to life and is then killed by one of Leopold's employees, the group discovers its blood, and horn can cure all sorts of ailments ranging from acne to cancer. However, when a now-healed Leopold tries to financially capitalize on this, they suddenly find themselves terrorized by the unicorn's vengeful family.
Who's in it? The movie stars Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poultier, Téa Leoni, Anthony Carrigan and Richard E. Grant.
Review: I had heard of Death of a Unicorn but didn't know too much about it until coming across the film on one of our movie channels. It looked intriguing so my wife and I gave it a try yesterday evening. Unfortunately, the film just didn't do it for us.
I'll give the movie some points for uniqueness. When someone thinks of unicorns, they are normally going to think of a mythical creature that is friendly, and this movie made sure to change that narrative.
I also thought the casting was solid. Everyone from Rudd and Ortega through some of the lesser-known supporting actors did their part, making the movie more believable than it might otherwise be.
Unfortunately, at least for us, the good was outweighed by the bad. This starts with the film, which I would describe as a horror/comedy falling short in both categories. The plot of the movie really needed to pick a lane and because the writers didn't, it wasn't really all that scary, but it was also a bit too serious for the jokes to really take hold.
The thing that hurts the movie the most, in my opinion, is Elliott (Rudd) just isn't that likeable. Even when he was trying to convince Ridley (Ortega) he was just trying to look out for her and protect her, it seemed like he was lying, and she was more of an afterthought. Of course, not helping all of this was the brutal way he used that tire iron early in the film. Even if he did have good intentions, that was a bit much, and it didn't look like he even had an ounce of remorse.
As a result of this, it was very hard to root for Elliott throughout the movie because he really didn't seem much different from his greedy employers and there wasn't much to convince us Ridley wouldn't be better off as an orphan. Once it became clear the unicorns had a bond with Ridley and weren't going to harm her, my wife and I were 100 percent "Team Unicorn" and rooting for Elliott to be killed along with the rest of them. I am guessing that wasn't supposed to be the case.
Final Opinion: It's a unique concept but the movie doesn't accomplish much beyond that, other than maybe being the first film to get us to truly dislike Paul Rudd.
My Grade: C-
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Here are some reviews of other movies with Paul Rudd or Jenna Ortega:
Movie Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)
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