Rarely have unicorns been portrayed as anything other than the gentle, glittering woodland guardians featured in films like Legend and The Last Unicorn and splashed across countless Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers. A cinematic symbol of purity and fantasy, they don’t usually come with blood-soaked horns and a major vendetta. But Alex Scharfman’s directorial debut, Death of a Unicorn, flips the script, throwing you into a feral fairy tale where these mythical beasts bite back…hard. This cheeky, gory, and surprisingly clever creature feature turns unicorn mythology on its head, giving the ethereal steeds razor-sharp fangs and a taste for bloody revenge. And it’s an entertaining ride.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much going in. The trailer for this A24 release made it look like it was a satire of a film the studio would have sent out five years ago when it was still in its relative infancy and attempting to attract a particular type of audience member. The marketing came off as self-aware, trying just a little too hard, stylistically hollow, and resting heavily on its ironic vibe. Early reactions weren’t encouraging either, and after the recent divisiveness of Opus (which I enjoyed), I went in expecting another misfire. However, I came out a believer in a project that knows its job and has done it well.

The premise is B-movie gold. Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd, Ant-Man) is a widowed father dragging his angsty teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega, Scream) to a crisis management summit hosted by his boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?). En route, they accidentally hit a unicorn. Yes, a real one. Seeing a miracle in the creature’s shimmering corpse, Odell brings in his family and a few opportunistic scientists (including Spirited‘s Sunita Mani and Asteroid City‘s Steve Park), and the corporate vultures begin circling. But the unicorn’s parents aren’t thrilled about the exploitation of their magical, now-deceased offspring. What follows is a bloody reckoning, somewhere between Jurassic Park and Ready or Not, with a splash of Knives Out family dysfunction and a metric ton of flying body parts.

Despite my hesitations, this is a slick debut from Scharfman, a first-time director but longtime indie producer. His experience on sets over the years has clearly paid off. Working with a lean budget and a contained setting allows him to ensure the creative choices are sharp. As with many A24 releases, you can see where every dollar of that $15 million went on screen, especially in the gloriously grotesque creature effects. Majestic but monstrous, the unicorns are genuinely scary, and the VFX team sells them with just the right amount of heightened realism.

Larry Fong’s lush cinematography is unpretentious, capably balancing the lighting for moody horror with the pure absurdity of the premise. Dan Romer and Giosuè Greco’s score keeps things playful without undercutting the stakes, and the final credits run to “DOA,” a trippy track from St. Vincent that feels like the perfect punctuation mark on the madness we’ve just seen.

Performance-wise, Will Poulter (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) ahem, gallops away with the movie. As Odell’s son Shepard, a spoiled nepo-baby with more money than sense, Poulter makes arrogance hilarious and transforms potentially one-note dialogue into biting commentary. Téa Leoni (Jurassic Park III) gets to chew scenery with glee as Odell’s country club wife, and Grant is never not fun when he’s being gleefully amoral. Rudd dials back his usual snark as a grieving father trying to reconnect with his daughter, and while Ortega still leans on familiar beats (she’s got to snap out of these emo/goth girl roles), she adds enough surprises here that suggest she’s more than ready for roles that will tap into more of her talents.

What really surprised me was how much heart the film brings with it. Amid the carnage and unicorn run amokness, there’s an emotional thread between Rudd and Ortega’s characters—two people struggling to rebuild something fragile while surrounded by a family literally being torn apart. It’s a nice contrast to the Leopolds, who are all ego, privilege, and exploitation disguised as ambition. While Death of a Unicorn doesn’t often get bogged down in its messaging, you’d be blind not to see a clear commentary running throughout about the ultra-rich hoarding miracle cures for profit and fixing the system for their benefit. If anything, it could’ve leaned harder into the satire and explored that further, but the brisk pacing of Ron Dulin’s no-frills editing keeps the story charging forward, horn-first.

Between the kills (inventive, ferocious, and darkly funny) and the chases (tense, stylishly executed), a strong current of classic monster-movie joy runs through Death of a Unicorn. It’s a welcome spin on the creature feature with a beast rarely exploited for screams of terror. For once, you’re getting a horror comedy that delivers the equal parts of the genres it splits. This is a unicorn hunt worth joining for fans of gory fun with a side of social commentary.