Warning: Major SPOILERS lie ahead for Death of a Unicorn!
Gone is the legend of cute and cuddly creatures and in are murderous, monster-sized nightmares in Death of a Unicorn. The A24 horror movie, hailing from debuting feature writer/director Alex Scharfman, centers on a father and daughter who inadvertently hit a unicorn with their car while driving to the remote mansion of the father’s boss and his family. After the science conglomerate begins studying its biology and healing properties, the group find themselves the targets of its deadly parents.
Led by a star-studded roster that includes Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega and Téa Leoni, much of the Death of a Unicorn cast meets their end in quite brutal fashion throughout its runtime. Some such deaths include Steve Park’s Dr. Song being impaled through the gut by one of the parent unicorns’ horns, as well as bodyguards’ heads squished under their hooves. However, a few characters do make it out alive by the movie’s end, including Rudd, Ortega and Anthony Carrigan’s Griff, all changed in different ways by their experiences.
In honor of the movie’s release, ScreenRant interviewed/director Alex Scharfman to discuss Death of a Unicorn and its biggest spoilers. The writer/director broke down why the movie ends on a major cliffhanger, particularly how it plays into a full-circle structure for the film’s opening. He also explains why certain characters had their grisly deaths, which were his favorite to put together, and confirms the off-screen fate of a fan-favorite character.
Rudd’s Death & Resurrection Is Key To His Character’s Complete Growth
“…He Ultimately Makes A Selfless Decision At The End And Pays The Ultimate Price For It.”
Throughout the movie, Ortega’s Ridley frequently denotes the legend of a pure-hearted maiden being able to successfully coax a unicorn to sleep and prevent it from causing further destruction. Will Poulter’s Shep, wanting to both survive and still profit off of everything, puts this to the test in the movie’s climax, threatening to kill her unless she serves as bait for him. While it initially works in tranquilizing them, Rudd’s Elliot stabs Shep before he can fully tie the parent unicorns up, with Shep stabbing him in return before being killed with a kick to the face by one of them.
As Ridley mourns the death of her remaining parent, the unicorns bring Elliot’s body over to that of their child, putting their horns together to revive not only their offspring, but also Rudd’s character, who powerfully returns from the dead by holding one of the unicorn parents’ horns and seeing what Ortega’s character saw earlier in the film. When it came to crafting this emotional finale, Scharfman humorously explained that his writing process generally leaves out a movie’s climax, instead skipping to the ending and then building the bridge between them later.
“It was always sort of structured this way in my mind,” Scharfman explained.” When I write, very often, I will skip the climax, and I’ll write up to the climax, and then I’ll write the end, and then I’ll be like, ‘How do I figure out what happens here now?’ I don’t think my first draft had a climax in the movie, but my second draft, which did have a climax in it, always had it this way, basically.“
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When it came to the reason why he allowed Elliot to survive, Scharfman ultimately felt as though his revival was important for the character’s “journey of moving from selfishness to selflessness.” “The lie that he kind of needs to overcome is that his selflessness is that his selfishness actually is selfless, and that he’s doing this for his daughter, and that he’s trying to build a better life.” The writer/director went on to explain that his goal to become wealthy was, instead, rooted in an “anxiety that he has about having suffered a great loss in the past“.
Scharfman specifically points to the moment in which Elliot had the “realization that, actually, maybe that financial security is just something he likes“, in which Shep promises him to continue with his family company’s CEO promotion if Elliot helped with securing the unicorn parents. This, ultimately, leads to him making the “selfless decision” to stab Shep and subsequently “pays the ultimate price” by dying, but that because he frees the unicorns before he dies, “that selflessness is rewarded” by them:
Ales Scharfman: By stabbing Shep, he loses a ton financially, he could have been a billionaire for the rest of his life, and made all the fortunes and more that he came into the weekend seeking, but by rejecting it, he kind of places something more important over that, and that is largely recognizing the value structure that his daughter has been trying to impose upon him throughout the movie.
Death Of A Unicorn’s Cliffhanger Ending Is Meant To (Mostly) Be A Hopeful One
“…I Do Like The Symmetry Of Ending In The Place Where We Began.”
After having successfully survived the main thrust of the film, Death of a Unicorn‘s ending sees Elliot and Ridley taken away by the police, with Griff following in one of the Leopolds’ cars behind them. As they humorously accept their predicament and cozy up in the back of their police vehicle, the father and daughter realize the family of unicorns are now chasing after them, with Elliot and Ridley leaning over in brace position while smiling, ready for the unicorns to hit the car and try and release them, though cuts to black before we see how it plays out.
As to why the movie ends on such an ambiguous note, Scharfman felt it important to remind audiences that “these are some metal f—-ng unicorns, and they’re gonna f–k s–t up“, even as he made sure to lay out a “certain emotional heart” to the story, feeling that the tone was meant to balance “a sentimentality that is rising through the back end of the movie.” The writer/director also noted a symmetry between the beginning of the movie and the ending, which “feels right, somehow” after encountering the challenge of creating an ending for his concept.
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In looking at what the ending means for Elliot and Ridley, Scharfman didn’t explicitly state what their ultimate fates were, but did assure that the unicorns were coming back for the duo with benevolent means, wanting to help them escape due to “having an ongoing, permanent connection to each other“, which he says ties into the movie’s larger metaphor of “the touching of the horn creating this kind of ethneogenic, semi-religious cosmic experience“. He does, however, denote that their destructive final actions are simply a matter of not being familiar with human machinations:
Alex Scharfman: They’re kind of like, “Yeah, okay, great. You’re being held captive, we’ll smash the car and see what happens.” [Chuckles] But certainly, not necessarily understanding the social implications of [the escape] or the mechanical [elements]. Like, when they’re coming into the house, they’re slipping on the stairs, they don’t know what stairs are, they’ve never encountered stairs. So, I don’t know, there was something fun about that.
Scharfman Has A Few Favorite Kills In Death Of A Unicorn
He Also Assures One Character Is Very Much Alive, Despite The Cliffhanger Ending
While he lays out emotional beats, Scharfman still takes plenty of time to use his wild concept to deliver some shocking deaths in Death of a Unicorn. One notable death that comes in the film’s third act is that of Sunita Mani’s Dr. Bhatia, the kindhearted scientist rocked by the death of Dr. Song, who is torn in half by the two unicorns while trying to escape. Despite her sweet nature, the writer/director says her death comes from the unicorns “playing in absolutes“, and that her holding onto a vial of the baby unicorn’s horn is “still an infraction“, even if a small one.
When it comes to which are his favorite kills in Death of a Unicorn, Scharfman specifically points to Richard E. Grant’s Odell and Téa Leoni’s Belinda’s demises. The former, which Scharfman recalls having “the largest reaction” during the movie’s SXSW 2025 screening, proved one he wasn’t sure was “going to be doable” upon writing the script, having written out in detail the Leopold family patriarch’s death and the script, but praised his team’s ability to mix digital and practical effects for the kill, in which Odell is stabbed through the head by one of the unicorns’ horns.
“I love that kill, because it’s a combination of practical and digital,” Scharfman described, “where we have a practical horn under his head, and there’s a puppet in the foreground, but then a digital horn going through his mouth, and then the digital horn coming through the top of his head, which I love, because when he opens his mouth, you could see the blood on the horn as it’s kind of sliding up, which I’d written into the script.“
As for Leoni’s, which Scharfman says is his ultimate favorite, the writer/director opined it to actually be “really tragic“, particularly as he enjoyed creating the Leopold family matriarch, and that “she’s misguided“, praising Leoni for her work in the role. He also praised his team’s practical approach to creating her death, in which one of the parent unicorns chews her entrails out from her stomach while she lies on a table, calling it a “really nice marriage of practical and digital effects“. He also described it as an homage to George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead, “which is a movie I love.“
While the fates of Rudd’s Elliot and Ortega’s Ridley are sure to be some of the most debated after the movie’s cliffhanger ending, another key character whose fate is left a mystery is that of Carrigan’s Griff, having been driving behind the police car the unicorns crashed into to save the father and daughter. When asked about him, Scharfman confirmed Griff survives Death of a Unicorn‘s ending, assuring that “Griff is doing great” and was able to get out of there with the luxury car he was driving.
More About Death Of A Unicorn
A father (Paul Rudd) and daughter (Jenna Ortega) accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where his billionaire boss (Richard E. Grant) seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.
Death of a Unicorn is now in theaters.
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Source: ScreenRant Plus
Death of a Unicorn
7/10
- Release Date
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March 28, 2025
- Director
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Alex Scharfman
- Writers
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Alex Scharfman