'Death of a Unicorn': A Film That Exists
By Natalie McCarty
There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. You could sit in traffic, wait for a doctor who is running behind, or—perhaps most agonizingly—scroll endlessly through Netflix without making a selection. In this context, A24’s Death of a Unicorn is perfectly fine. It is a movie. It plays from beginning to end. It has actors, some ideas, and a semblance of plot. But does it do anything particularly remarkable? Not really.
Courtesy of A24
The premise had promise: A father-daughter road trip takes a darkly comedic turn when they hit a unicorn with their car, leading them into the clutches of an elite corporate retreat where morally dubious billionaires want to extract its mystical properties for profit. This could have been absurdist gold, a sharp satire of greed and corporate overreach, maybe even a twisted fairy tale. Instead, it plays out like a script that kept getting almost rewritten into something more interesting but never quite made it.
Paul Rudd is effortlessly watchable, but this role is a bit boring, playing the affable dad who seems too good-natured for the monstrous elites he’s surrounded by. Jenna Ortega, whose presence usually elevates a film, does her best with a character who often feels like a sidekick in her own story. But let’s talk about the real MVP here: Will Poulter, professional movie savior.
Courtesy of A24
For the third time this week, I’m writing a review about Poulter, who arrives with his uncanny ability to inject life into an otherwise mediocre film. Playing a spoiled, dim-witted heir with a wardrobe that screams "rich people don't actually dress well," he delivers a performance that almost makes the movie worth watching. Poulter has this way of embodying characters who are both completely ridiculous and oddly magnetic, and in a film that often struggles to decide if it's comedy, horror, or social commentary, he at least chooses a lane and speeds down it.
The problem with Death of a Unicorn isn’t that it’s bad: it’s that it’s utterly unremarkable. It doesn’t fully commit to its satire, nor does it have the energy to be an outright comedy. The horror elements feel half-baked, and the script never leans hard enough into the surrealism that the premise begs for.
So, would I recommend it? Only if you’ve already burned through your watchlist and feel a deep, unshakable need to see Will Poulter do the Lord’s work yet again. And that Cocteau Twins needle drop was dope. Otherwise, two stars.
