Death of a Unicorn Review

 I recently saw Death of a Unicorn, and here are my thoughts…

On the way to a weekend-long job interview for an eccentric billionaire family, a lawyer and his daughter hit and suddenly kill a unicorn and must deal with the family's selfish plans in order to not jeopardize their future financial security…

The heart of this movie is the relationship between the father and daughter characters (played by Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega), and despite you getting frustrated with Paul’s character at the beginning (which is my design), you feel for both characters and understand both of their responses to the situation they find themselves in.

My favorite part was Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, and Richard E. Grant are my favorite part of the movie; they may start out the film reserved, but by the halfway point, they start chewing scenery like they’ve been stranded on an island for a week, haven’t eaten, and are now at a buffet…

and it’s fun to watch lol

For a lower-budgeted film, the special effects on the unicorn and in general are pretty impressive. Everything is well detailed, and in the second half, without spoiling anything… They know how to get a reaction out of the audience with those effects.

I’ve noticed a trend recently. We’re a lot of horror movies/black comedies that satirize and make commentary about the rich and powerful (Ready or Not, Knives Out, Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, Brightburn, The Menu, Succession, Pig, White Lotus, The Boys), and spoiler alert… This is another one. It doesn’t really add much new to the table that the other movies haven’t done, and while it could be a little heavy-handed at points, the actors who play the family are very good and give some fun dialogue and actually have a bit more heart to them later on than you would expect, which I appreciated.

Also shout out to Anthony Carrigan, Jessica Hines, Sunita Mani, and Steve Park. They may not have the most developed roles in the film, but with what they’re given, they bring a lot of humor and laughs to the film with their characters being overwhelmed and tired by having to deal with this crazy family and their extravagant requests.

I liked the look of the movie; it isn’t anything that stands out too much, but the fancy cabin mansion in the woods, paintings of medieval royalty, and all the fancy equipment just gave the film a unique charm as far as set design.

The movie had some fun twists and turns, and while I’m sure you can predict where it all ends up while you watch it, and you kind of wish Paul Rudd’s character had more of a spine and talked to his daughter more and she explained herself more, it is all enjoyable while you watch, and there are a few surprises. I appreciated it, so walking to the movie, you have more positive than negative.

I’ll give it somewhere between a high three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️ and a low four stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. It’s a movie I can see different people having different reactions to depending on their sense of humor, but overall most people would enjoy it.