SPOILER WARNING: The following article gives away certain key details from the plot of Death of a Unicorn. If you have not seen the new 2025 movie yet and do not want the magic ruined for you, I recommend that you proceed with caution.
The bigger a movie studio gets, the more prolific its films’ ensembles become. That is especially evident in the latest A24 movie, Death of a Unicorn, which stars longtime A-lister Paul Rudd and recent A-lister Jenna Ortega as a father and daughter who fatally hit a mythical creature with their car. The movie also stars Will Poulter, Téa Leoni, and Academy Award nominee Richard E. Grant as a wealthy family who want to profit from the animal’s magical abilities.
Having seen writer and director Alex Scharfman’s feature debut, I can say the true stars here are the unicorns. However, among the human actors involved, there is one who particularly blew me away with what I believe is the absolute best performance in Death of a Unicorn. Allow me to explain...
Will Poulter Is Brilliantly Hilarious In Death Of A Unicorn
Many of the best Will Poulter movies and TV shows have proven that the actor has the masterful ability to switch between playing nice and playing really, really bad on a dime. He has even demonstrated this duality within the same movie, namely when Adam Warlock (a role he would be interested in revisiting in the MCU) is introduced as a villain in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 before becoming an ally. Well, in Death of a Unicorn, he portrays Shepard Leopold as a total amoral baddie, but to an irresistibly comical degree.
Poulter does an incredible job as the son of a wealthy pharmaceutical company CEO, portraying the most spoiled, arrogant, and even delusional aspects of his personality in a manner that can prove maddening but never irritating, due to his skilled authority over the script's comedic elements.
Also, those toxic traits do not disappear when Shepard snorts a line of unicorn horn shavings and suddenly becomes a genius, which I thought was, indeed, a genius decision. It is one of my favorite performances from the Son of Rambow actor yet, which is really saying something, and was key to my enjoyment of this modern take on the fantasy genre.
The Other Time Will Poulter Played A Great Problematic Character In An A24 Horror Movie
Curiously, this is not the first time that Poulter has played a despicable douchebag in an A24 horror movie (and make no mistake, Death of a Unicorn is absolutely a new horror movie). The last time was when he added jangled nerves to Midsommar as Mark, who is loud, immature, dismissive of other people's cultures, and just about every other shameful stereotype you could apply to a white male college student.
After realizing the similarities between Shepard and Mark, I then remembered that the writer and director of Midsommar, Ari Aster, is also an executive producer for Death of a Unicorn. I would not be surprised if he had a hand in casting Poulter, knowing the actor would be a perfect match.
Shepard Leopold is not the last despicable douchebag that Poulter will be seen playing this year, as he is reprising his role from Netflix’s interactive movie, Black Mirror: Bandernsatch for Black Mirror Season 7. He also has another A24 flick coming out next month, Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare, which is sure to demand an entirely different kind of performance from the actor.
After seeing the performance he cooks up in Death of a Unicorn, you can consider me perpetually excited for whatever he delivers next.
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