Updated April 03, 2025 at 10:58 AM ET
In Death of a Unicorn, actors Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega play a father and daughter driving deep into the wilderness when they hit a unicorn.
Rudd's character, Elliot, isn't quite sure the unicorn is dead. So, he bludgeons the magical beast with a tire iron.
"Just to put it out of its misery," Rudd told Morning Edition's Leila Fadel. "It's thoughtful, but gruesome."
Thoughtful, but gruesome is an apt descriptor for the film as well. As it turns out, hitting a unicorn isn't quite like hitting a squirrel. The unicorns in this film are a lot more vengeful and organized. What starts out as a dark comedy turns into a unicorn gore-fest.
Death of a Unicorn, written and directed by Alex Scharfman, premiered March 28 in theaters.
Scharfman and Rudd joined Morning Edition via a somewhat unsteady smartphone app. During our conversation with the two, Scharfman's connection dropped. Rudd used the opportunity to share some choice words about his director.
The following conversation is edited for length and clarity.
Alex Scharfman:
I really had no interest in unicorns at the outset, but it sort of led me down a rabbit hole of exploration of unicorn mythology and unicorn lore. And at some point, it clicked into place that it was a way to tell a contemporary version of a creature feature and do my own version of it.
Leila Fadel:
And also, I had no idea that the lore around unicorns was that they are these vengeful creatures, because my experience with unicorns is, like, My Little Pony unicorns.
Scharfman:
Yeah. Well, most of our experience with unicorns today is My Little Pony stuff. But the truth is, that only goes back, like, 50, 75 years… (silence)
Fadel:
Did we lose Alex? Alex?
Paul Rudd:
I think he might have just been impaled by a unicorn. (laughter) But this is good. Honestly, can I tell you about Alex?
Fadel:
Yeah. Like, tell me the truth.
Rudd:
Oh, this guy. Oh, God. It's all unicorns with this guy, honestly.
Scharfman:
Better now?
Rudd:
Oh, hey, he's back. He's back. Yes, we can hear you.
Fadel:
Yes. And Paul was not saying anything rude while you were gone. (laughter)
Rudd:
No. I was singing your praises.
Fadel:
OK. So you were saying that only goes back 50 or 75 years, and then I lost you.
Scharfman:
Oh, yeah. We've had them in our Western culture for almost 2,500 years. The first written account of a unicorn was around 400 BC. But, for most of human history, it used to be very different, and it used to have this much more primal, ancient god kind of quality to it.
Fadel:
So they discover this unicorn. You've thrown it in the trunk after bludgeoning it. You play a fairly timid lawyer who's dragging his daughter to a wilderness preserve and it's owned by a wealthy, big pharma family he's trying to do business with, and you take it to the home of this really wealthy family. That family discovers that the unicorn's body has healing properties and it puts your character in a bind. If you could talk about that and what happens between you and your daughter, played by Jenna Ortega.
Rudd:
Yes, well, I'm playing this guy, Elliot, who is a father first and also a recently widowed father. And in an effort to be a good parent and make sure that we're taken care of, securing some kind of deal here with this family is important. Obviously, listening to your child and making the correct moral decisions is also important.
And I think my character spends a great deal of this film with one foot in each camp and trying his best to balance it out and do what he believes is really right in the long run, because he knows best — or so he thinks.
Fadel:
Where did you draw from there, Alex, writing that into the movie?
Scharfman:
That notion that I think is tied also to Paul's character's arc, is this question of moral relativism and do the ends justify the means? And can we convince ourselves that what we want to do is maybe more morally appropriate or acceptable than it actually is? And how we all kind of go about our daily lives of maybe convincing ourselves that what we're after is more honorable than perhaps it could be.
Fadel:
The unicorns are scary, but the humans might be just as scary — the really wealthy ones.
Scharfman:
Yes. That was part of the thinking was, like, a monster movie where the real monsters are the people.
Fadel:
Yeah. And, Paul, you've had this really successful, long career in film. How much horror have you done?
Rudd:
Some of the things I've done could be described that way, but unintentionally, I would say.
When it comes to actual, technical horror, not that much. This was maybe the second. I don't really know. You know, the very first movie I ever did was a Halloween movie. And that was terrifying for a number of reasons.
But, yeah, it was somewhat new to me. I hadn't had a ton of experience working on scary stuff.
Fadel:
Is there a genre you're, like, no. I'll never do this.
Rudd:
Snuff films. I put my foot down. (laughter)
That's where I draw the line. Other than that, my line is always open. Email me, call, text.
Scharfman:
I was going to send you my new script, too, Paul, and now I'm not going to.
Rudd:
I'm sorry. I'm very busy.
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