Review: 'Death Of A Unicorn' (2025)
A spectacular ensemble cast engergizes a fun creature feature that yearns to be of a time when movies like this had the budgets and tools needed to really cut loose.
Death of a Unicorn (2025)
- 104 minutes
- Rated R for strong violent content, gore, language and some drug use
- Written and Directed by Alex Scharfman
- Produced by Ari Aster, Lucas Joaquin, Tyler Campellone, Drew Houpt, Lars Knudsen, Alex Scharfman, Tim Headington and Theresa Steele Page
- Starring Jenna Ortega, Paul Rudd, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Carrigan, Jessica Hynes, Sunita Mani and Steve Park
- Cinematography by Larry Fong
- Edited by Ron Dulin
- Music by Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco
- Production Companies: Secret Engine, Monoceros Media, Square Peg, Royal Budapest Film Co. and Ley Line Entertainment
- Opening theatrically the week of March 28 courtesy of A24
Death of a Unicorn is most undercut by the near-death of the “middle class” studio movie. We still get non-franchise, star-driven, high-concept studio programmers. 2025 has thus far been a treasure trove of such. But in a world where almost every non-tentpole, non-franchise and non-IP flick is essentially a commercial coin toss, and when post-theatrical doesn’t quite offer the long-term riches it once did, these films tend to be cheaper. While a film like Baby Driver got $37 million in 2017 to tell its story of a gee-whiz underdog protagonist unwillingly caught up with bank heists and gunfights, Novocaine gets a $18 million budget while we sigh with gratitude that it even exists. This is not a new problem, as (quality notwithstanding) compare the grandiose scale of Contact with the claustrophobic Arrival. They don’t make them like they used to, because they used to be able to spend $33 million on a flick like Snakes on a Plane.