DEATH OF A UNICORN

This is a rare thing: an original horror-comedy that actually earns its laughs and its scares. Alex Scharfman's script skewers Big Pharma greed with real wit, the cast (led by Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega) is excellent, and underneath the mayhem is a genuinely moving story about a father and daughter healing from grief together.

But this is not a family movie, and it was never trying to be one. The unicorn revenge rampage gets bloody, even if the tone keeps it from feeling truly horrific. More than thirty obscenities and profanities — including at least fourteen "f" words — pile up quickly, and there's drug use played for dark comedy.

If you're an adult or older teen who can handle R-rated horror-comedy without it troubling your conscience, this is one of the most inventive films of its kind in years. If you're choosing for your kids, or for yourself and profanity or gore genuinely bother you, this isn't the one. Bottom line: see it if you're a grown-up who wants smart, original horror-comedy — skip it if you're building a family movie night.

Elliot, a corporate attorney still reeling from his wife's death, takes his college-age daughter Ridley on a trip to rural Alaska for a career-making job interview with an eccentric billionaire pharma family. Getting lost on the way, he accidentally hits something in the road — a real, live unicorn. What starts as a tragic accident turns into something far stranger once the family he's trying to impress learns what's lying in the back of his SUV.

Four stars means this one delivers almost everything it promises. Scharfman pulls off something rare: a sharp, funny satire of Big Pharma greed that never feels preachy or ideological, built on a cast that clearly understands the tone it's going for. The CGI is impressively convincing given the film's modest $15 million budget, and the horror-comedy balance mostly holds even as the violence escalates.

What elevates it above a clever genre exercise is the relationship at its center — Elliot and Ridley's grief and reconciliation give the movie a beating heart the premise doesn't promise on paper. It's an unusual, inventive film, the kind Hollywood rarely makes anymore, even if its strangeness may keep it from finding a mass audience.

There's more moral substance here than the premise suggests. At its core is a redemptive father-daughter relationship — a man and his daughter, both grieving the same loss, learning to lean on each other again. Ridley's instinct throughout is protective and noble: she wants to save the unicorns from slaughter and exploitation, not exploit them herself. That's a real moral center, not a decoration.

The film's satire of corporate greed also deserves credit for what it doesn't do. It takes clear aim at a family that would rather harvest a magical creature to death than let it live, and it does so without turning into an ideological lecture — a genuinely difficult needle to thread in this genre, and one the film threads well.

None of that erases the cost of getting there: comic bloodshed, drug use played for laughs, and language that piles up fast. This is a story where healing and greed sit side by side, and where the film trusts the audience to feel the difference.

The ache underneath it all — a father and daughter trying to find their way back to each other after loss — points to something true. Scripture speaks of a God who turns "the hearts of fathers to their children" (Malachi 4:6), restoring what grief and distance break apart.

This is a strange, original, genuinely well-made film with a real father-daughter heart beating underneath all the bloody chaos — and it is not for your kids. Our answer is the one we opened with: worth the trip — older teens and adults only. Looking for something the whole family can watch together instead? Start here:.