How much do you need? Not want, but need. The basics of living include food, water, and shelter. In the times we live in, it may be fair to extend that further to include medical care and internet access (can’t push for all digital and not ensure that everyone can be online). Beyond that, however, things are more questionable. The things we want far often exceed our need and that’s when hard questions about humanity come into play as it relates to the lengths one will go to gluttonously grasp for the want. This is a critical point of writer/director Alex Scharfman’s Death of a Unicorn, a fantastical horror comedy that premiered at SXSW 2025 before releasing into theaters in March. Now, however, it’s available to own on digital and physical formats. The A24 Shop edition includes feature commentary, a 15-minute featurette, eight deleted scenes, and six collectible postcards.
L-R: Paul Rudd as Elliot and Jenna Ortega as Ridley in DEATH OF A UNICORN. Photo Credit: Balazs Goldi. Photo courtesy of A24.
Widower Elliot (Paul Rudd) brings his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) on his business trip to meet his ailing boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant); Odell’s wife, Belinda (Téa Leoni); and son, Shepard (Will Poulter); at their home in the Canadian Rockies in order to hopefully complete a business deal that would make Elliot the family’s proxy moving forward, thereby setting up his own family for good. However, after experiencing several travel set-backs resulting in them running late, Elliot is a smidge distracted while driving and slams into an animal that leapt into the road. Stopping to investigate, neither Elliot nor Ridley can really process what they’re seeing: the creature is a unicorn. Freaked out by the creature and terrified of being late, the two place the corpse in their car and continue on to the Leopold home, unaware that what will follow them is old and unrelenting in its quest to retrieve one of its own.
The following is based on a Blu-ray retail copy provided by Alliance Entertainment.
DEATH OF A UNICORN digipak internal case interior. Photo courtesy of A24.
Death of a Unicorn inspires two opposing reactions from me. The first is absolute awe in the way that producer-turned-filmmaker Scharfman (Blow The Man Down; Resurrection) utilizes practical effects throughout this production in order to make as much as possible tangible so that the fantastical feels anchored, thereby giving the dramatic tension weight. The included 15-minute featurette “How to Kill a Unicorn” invites the audience to see the way Scharfman used real horses, puppeteers, and CG to bring these unicorns to life, the combination on-screen more often feeling like a handshake than sleight-of-hand, but, nevertheless, ensuring that the audience maintains a sense of wonder and peril. By using horses and puppeteers, by shooting on-location for outdoor scenes and on a larger set for the house, a perpetual sense of reality mingles with the unreal, ensuring that the audience, having accepted the premise, stays with it all the way to the credits. The featurette does also include a brief walkthrough of the Leopold home by production designer Amy Williams (The Idea of You; Sleeping with Other People) wherein we get a closer look at the details around the home which helped convey the indulgences of the Leopold family, from magazine covers they are featured on to artwork to rugs with various animals in attack poses to other pieces of dressing that made the set a home. These things work so well together in crafting a world in which we can roll with the reality of the existence of unicorns and the horror of crossing them.
L-R: Téa Leoni as Belinda, Richard E Grant as Odell, Will Poulter as Shepard, and Paul Rudd as Elliot in DEATH OF A UNICORN. Photo Credit: Balazs Goldi. Photo courtesy of A24.
Where the film leaves me cold is the obviousness of the trajectory of the story. This is not because the cast isn’t more than up for the job, appropriately applying the right delivery to ensure the audience understands who’s maintaining the moral high ground (Ridley), who would run if he could (Anthony Carrigan’s Griff), and who is perpetually confusing wealth for protection (Elliot and the Leopolds). It’s because we know that the Leopolds are terrible people before the unicorn is discovered from the way that the dying Odell espouses wisdom of others as if it’s his own, the avoidance of details by Belinda as if they take up unnecessary space, and Shepard’s propensity for relying on Griff to do things that he can so easily do himself (demonstrating a combination of selfishness he picked up from his parents). These are the kinds of wealthy people for whom the discovery of miracle medicinal healing via exposure to the blood of the struck unicorn means more for them, less for everyone else. Odell changes from declaring himself gracefully accepting his upcoming demise to avarice as he spends the rest of the film devouring as much of the unicorn as he can, however he can (blood, meat, shavings of horn), in order to bolster his already healed body. Knowing that the unicorn can heal itself brings about a terrible horror at the pain Odell is willing to inflict on others in order to prop himself up, yet, it’s undercut by the fact that it’s expected. That the Leopold home is beset upon by two other unicorns looking for the one Elliot struck, that they are murdering every human they find, is not shocking or surprising. For context, yes, this is pretty part and parcel for an “animal attack” film in the vein of Jaws (1975), Deep Blue Sea (1999), and Beast (2022), so when I speak of the film being unsurprising, it’s that the film, while humorous in the way it violently dispatches the characters, doesn’t really do anything more with this. It’s all so obvious that the only real surprise is that Ridley isn’t the only survivor. This is generally fine for fans of the subgenre, but those looking for something more are going to find themselves wanting severely, regardless of how well this cast makes you hate them.
DEATH OF A UNICORN digipak internal case exterior. Photo courtesy of A24.
If you are looking for more, the only place you’ll get it is in the bonus features. There’s the feature-length commentary track with Scharfman to get a guided tour, if you will, of the film by way of the filmmaker. There’s “How to Kill a Unicorn,” which, in addition to the aforementioned items, allows the cast and crew to discuss the film amid on-set and final footage. For instance, Scharfman talks about the origin point of Death of a Unicorn and why he decided to tell this particular story. Ortega (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) discusses what intrigued her about the project and what brought her onboard. We’re shown various props and gags associated with the unicorns and get to listen to the ideation behind why these choices were made (puppets and real horses on set) and how that enhanced the performances of the cast in a comparison of tactile versus digital creations. In particular, being able to see the on-set footage and final footage in between this section really helps to illustrate the magic of cinema. There are many small details about the making of the film related to interpersonal relationships or just filmmaking in general provided in this segment as it covers a wide swath of material in the 15 minutes. The eight deleted scenes total 13 minutes and don’t offer a great deal of depth, like a member of the security time who puts their foot in their mouth with Ridley before getting murdered, the implication that Belinda is more or less over Odell’s illness (which doesn’t jive with the rest of the film), and the direct suggestion that Belinda’s been cheating on Odell (which diminishes the suggestion that the Leopold family may be ghoulish but they do love each other — perhaps their only redeeming quality). These deleted scenes are available to view individually or as a group.
L-R: Writer/director Alex Scharfman and actor Paul Rudd on the set of DEATH OF A UNICORN. Photo Credit: Balazs Goldi. Photo courtesy of A24.
Tucked within the digipak packaging are the last piece of bonus material — a small collection of six postcards. Each one has a still from the set on one side, such as a unicorn poking its head around a corner, a unicorn steak resting on a plate, or members of the cast, with the name of the film and the description of the image plus the photographer credit on the back. The digipak exterior features the tapestry image that Ridley discovers in her research of the unicorns while the digipak interior features a darker image of a unicorn wandering the halls of the Leopold home. The shell case for the digipak is a light-weight cardboard that has a fantastical, almost 1980s throwback design with the title and cast while the back is more traditional with the title of the film, summary, single photo still, and release information. Overall, the Blu-ray release follows the same package design of other recent A24 releases.
DEATH OF A UNICORN collectible cards. Photo courtesy of A24.
While the film leaves one wanting for a lot of reasons, it’s no less entertaining as the “eat the rich” motif within it goes whole hog. Those who “just follow orders” rather than their conscience are given the painful end they deserve and those who insist that their needs matter more, well, their ends are kinder that they deserve. If nothing else, Scharfman makes it quite plain how the storyteller feels about the unethical rich and makes a solid case for checking out what they do next. One can only hope that the narrative is as splendidly imaginative as the execution.
Death of a Unicorn Special Features:
- Commentary with writer/director Alex Scharfman (1:47:22)
- How to Kill a Unicorn (15:18)
- Eight (8) Deleted Scenes (13:05)
- Six (6) Collectible Postcards
Available on digital April 29th, 2025.
Available on Blu-ray July 1st, 2025.
For more information, head to the official A24 Death of a Unicorn webpage.
To purchase, head to the official A24 Shop Death of a Unicorn webpage.
Final Score: 2 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Video, Reviews
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