Critics reviews

In the post-Get Out world, this is yet another bit of genre silliness that attempts, with noble intent, to staple some big, timely themes onto its goofy narrative, to somehow legitimise the daftness. Sadly, neither its high-minded nor low-minded efforts amount to much.

Being “about” one thing or another doesn’t necessarily make a film more worthy, and in this case, the message is just a flimsy excuse for ugly humans to pursue fantastic, mystical creatures in brutal ways, with the promise that they'll get theirs in the end... Mostly, though, Death of a Unicorn just feels like exhausting, enforced fun: its plot goes everywhere all at once for no discernible reason.

Watching the film, all its elements still feel like just that — the stuff of a pitch, ideas written on a whiteboard instead of a coherent vision to be executed... Apparently even unicorns are ready and eager to eat the rich, but it’s a spectacle Death of a Unicorn just isn’t able to do justice to.

Unabashedly nonsensical... [Death of a Unicorn] is a high-concept, middlebrow, low-stakes comedy about the haves and the (kind of) have-nots that’s effectively an elevator pitch — be afraid of unicorns, be very afraid — stretched to feature length.

A decent idea is beaten to death with CGI gore, clumsy filmmaking and the help of some talented players... [Death of a Unicorn] plays like what it most likely was in the screenwriting process: a satire of Big Pharma and skulduggery among the 1 percent that got shoehorned into the confines of a horror movie to make it more commercial.

Some of [the film's] darkness is admirably adult, with themes of grief, ecological destruction and capitalist greed to go with its gory fantasy kick. What should be a nasty hoot, however, is closer to a ho-hum... It certainly doesn’t help that the visual effects are a sloppy commingling of wildly varying quality.

While the film is partially redeemed by a couple of surprisingly touching late scenes... for the most part it’s merely a weak satire in which we’re meant to cheer as the moneyed class gets a sanguinary comeuppance, with crushed skulls and spilled intestines presented as hilarious.

There’s great joy in just watching this group of performers do their thing in “Death of a Unicorn,” a movie that recalls monster flicks from the ‘70s and ‘80s with brutal quality kills placed in a tapestry of social commentary and funny characters.

A pharmaceutical-industry satire so flaccid that it’s in desperate need of Cialis, Death of a Unicorn is destined to fade into the mythical margins of cinematic history, with future moviegoers convinced that – like its title creature – the film never really existed at all.

[Death of a Unicorn] might best be defined as a horror comedy... The suspense is solid, with just enough glorious gore to satisfy most audiences, and there are little touches throughout the film that sometimes feel plot-motivated, sometimes don’t, but all prove compelling.

Embracing its late-night creature-feature stupidity, Death Of A Unicorn doles out the requisite notes of suspense and empathy, but wants nothing more than to hilariously rend its ensemble of greedy pharmaceutical clowns limb from limb.

[Death of a Unicorn is] an agonizingly unfunny send-up of big pharma and “Jurassic Park”-scale tentpoles... The problem is we don’t really care who lives or dies, unless it’s, of course, these horrible rich people getting stabbed to death by unicorn horns.