Like ‘Jurassic Park’, but with Unicorns: A24 Blends Horror, Comedy, and Sweet Revenge in ‘Death of a Unicorn’
The trailer released Thursday for A24’s horror-comedy Death of a Unicorn brings to mind Jurassic Park, Alien, and even Cocaine Bear.
Produced by Ari Aster (Hereditary), Death of a Unicorn stars Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as Elliott and Ridley, a father and daughter who are driving to a weekend retreat when they hit something unusual. Yes, it’s a unicorn, which isn’t a spoiler, as it’s in the movie’s title. But what happens afterward is the real mystery.

Is the unicorn dead? And if not, why not? Richard E. Grant plays Elliott’s billionaire boss, and his remote compound is just science-equipped enough to investigate the unicorn’s seemingly curative properties – and just greedy enough to exploit it, all under the guise of helping humankind cure diseases like cancer and such.
But this unicorn isn’t the gentle virgin-seeker of legend. Taking cues from the predatory vicious velociraptors in Jurassic Park, the personal space-ignoring xenomorph mama in Alien, and the rage- and coke-fueled grizzly in Cocaine Bear, this unicorn, and maybe others, are out for payback – and as one character says, “there’s no negotiating with monsters.”
Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Carrigan, Sunita Mani, Jessica Hines and Stephen Park also star in the movie, which was written by Alex Scharfman, who also makes his directorial debut here.
Death of a Unicorn will have its world premiere at the upcoming South x Southwest festival on March 8th before it hits theaters on March 28th.