Horrorfest 2025: Death of a Unicorn

Death of a Unicorn
Written and directed by Alex Scharfman
Starring Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni and Richard E. Grant

USA, 2025

Jenna Ortega’s quickly becoming a bonafide scream queen. Or maybe she already was one, and I’m just now noticing. Not only has she done two literal SCREAM movies, she also showed up for Ti West’s X and the horror-adjacent WEDNESDAY and BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE. Now she’s chased by deadly unicorns in DEATH OF A UNICORN.

You’ll be shocked to learn Ortega stars as a sullen teen (or early 20-something? I think she’s in college) who is forced to accompany her goofy dad (Paul Rudd, a lawyer on a business trip to the isolated estate of a SUCCESSION-esque family (Richard E. Grant, Téa Leoni and Will Poulter). The patriarch’s on his deathbed so it’s time to sort out some SUCCESSION-esque stuff.

On the way there, they run over a unicorn. Before Rudd puts it out of its misery, Ortega bonds with it, and instead of calling someone Rudd decides to put the body in his car and continue on his business trip. How they get the body in the car is beyond me. They should have thrown in a line about how unicorns are miraculously lightweight. Instead they just had me wondering how they lifted the creature.

The movie actually had me wondering a lot of stuff, much to its detriment. As the whole crew figures out the dead unicorn’s body has miraculous healing properties and decide to exploit it for cash, the clock starts ticking until the time other unicorns show up toe exact their bloody revenge. Ortega keeps on telling everyone this is a bad idea, and attempting to explain a unicorn legend from some tapestries she saw once, but she explains it poorly and also doesn’t even really understand it. So the movie turns into JURASSIC PARK, with unicorns.


Not a bad premise. Just bad execution. Highlights include Leoni and Poulter as the one percent. Leoni walks a tight rope of acting concerned and like she has a heart while also being totally insincere, while Poulter supplies all the most comedic moments as he insists on both hot tubbing and snorting/drinking/mainlining anything he can get from the unicorn.

I think there could have been a good movie in here if they had abandoned all pretenses at trying to be a formulaic mainstream Hollywood movie and instead embraced the insanity of B-movie schlock. It IS schlock, it’s just a shame it’s self conscious schlock. Let your schlock flag fly, movie! Be free!