‘Death of a Unicorn’ trailer: Don’t meet your unicorn heroes

When we were kids, we all wanted to meet a unicorn. A beautiful, majestic being with a rainbow mane and a giant horn that could make our wishes come true. A24’s trailer for Death of a Unicorn will have you reconsidering.

Imagine, if you will, you’re driving in a car with your father, Paul Rudd. In this scenario, you are Jenna Ortega. Suddenly, the car hits something and spins out of control. You discover you’ve killed a unicorn. Instead of leaving it on the road, you put it in your car and a wealthy billionaire decides to try and use it as a science project. That’s what Death of a Unicorn presents to us. Well that and that if you meet a cute little unicorn, a big scary one is going to come and try to kill you.

The film is described as follows: “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.”

The rest of the cast includes Will Poulter and Téa Leoni. Honestly, Will Poulter meeting a unicorn in his swim trunks is going to be a top moment of 2025 for me. I can feel it.

This trailer is the stuff of nightmares. Because what do you mean unicorns are mean!? They’re supposed to be wonderfully magical beings who can make us happy! But it does highlight a great bit of media that we tend to “forget” when we talk about unicorns: They can cure people. And if we know anything about mankind, we know they’d exploit that in all the worse ways.

Unicorns have had enough of our nonsense

In media, we do love a unicorn. Remember in Harry Potter the rule was if you kill a unicorn, you’re cursed? Because they’re rare and how dare you? That’s kind of what is happening here but instead of becoming a social outcast, the unicorn’s friends will come and attack you. I hope the cure for cancer was worth the wrath of a unicorn!

The trailer really doesn’t give us much outside of a look into what a unicorn can do with that horn but it is pretty hilarious to watch a movie about a father and daughter on a road trip taking this kind of turn. Personally, I don’t think Paul Rudd would kill a unicorn but Richard E. Grant? Jury is still out. Will Poulter DEFINITELY would. (I’m kidding! No real unicorns were harmed in the making of this film.)

So, until we know more and we can see Death of a Unicorn for ourselves, at least we know that if it comes down to it, we know better than to use a unicorn’s blood for our own selfish benefit. Right? We all know this now?!