Death of a Unicorn Director Alex Scharfman on Crafting a Timely Dark Comedy
A24 and director Alex Cherches are ready to highlight a new light on Unicorn’s traditions with the latest version of the type ARTHOUSE Distributor. in The death of the rhinoceros, Gina Ortega (Wednesday) Paul Road (Avengers: End of the game) Play a daughter and a father who accidentally runs on a unicorn child on his way to an important meeting-one can do or break his family’s dealings with the employer rich in the father. The strange sequence of events leads to a discovery that can change the world, if it already comes out of the world of palace in the isolated magic forests.
IO9 recently sat with Schaarfman to discuss the upbringing of the , and the decision to throw Ortega alongside some of the funniest actors who work today, and why should it be spelling in today’s world fantasy so that they can laugh at it.
Sabina Griffs, IO9: So, I am not a fan of Unicorn usually, but I think you finally made me a grale. So thank you for that.
Alex Scharfman: This is what Gina also said. Gina was not in the same. I mean, I was not alone until I started searching for the movie. But yes, I think people got a layer of depth that we did not know there for a while.
IO9: Get it now. It can be metal like hell. Let’s start at the beginning. What is the background that you take on this project specifically? Because it is a wild journey.
Scherafman: The idea only came to me. The opening scene is somewhat in my head somewhere and I don’t really know where that came from. But sometimes this type of things happens, as you imagine a scene and you love, “Where does that go?” This began very naturally to pull a thread like, “Where does that?” And “What if someone hit a single -century with his car?” “What is Unicorn?” Like, what do we bring to that as a people?
IO9: When I imagined this happened to a daughter and her father, do you think, “Oh, yes, Paul Road will that my dad”?
Scherafman: At that time, no, before the actors or characters – was a scenario. I did not know what was going on, where they were going, or what it was; [it was] Just something stuck in my mind. It took me a few years until I started exploring it.
IO9: Certainly. He also gave me the feelings of Court Funigut’s short story that takes fictional elements to tell a very real spelling story.
Scherafman: Can I just say I am a lost corte Fonygut? He already has a story about the father and son in the Middle Ages, which is strange.
IO9: Oh yes, the story of Unicorn hunting.
Scherafman: Unionon trap.
IO9: Right!
Scherafman: Yes, well. Until you know the story.
IO9: Have you already thought about it while writing this, or did it happen?
Scherafman: This was a kind of conflict to be honest. I have read Funigut’s full selections. I have read every short story written at all. But this was not the person I was thinking of actively, because the seids are not in fact a central figure in that. It is about the father and son.
IO9: Certainly, taking this into consideration, you are clearly a great admirer of the time. Do you think that there are basics of making a spelling movie like this, especially during the time when it looks literally every day in real life as if it is a satire?
Scherafman: It is funny, when I started writing this, I started identifying it like 2019. I think the fall of 2019, Knives I just went out and I was like, “Oh, wonderful, satire”. Obviously, we have had a lot of irony in the commentary. I think something about this was attractive to me, when I started searching for unicorn and Unicorn’s fantasy legends, which I think at a certain stage I realized that by nature on class, social structures and classes. But in particular in the furnishings we face in the film that is referred to all the time, this is the Lord who sends his stadium and his followers to go to killing and returning him to one -century so that he can possess it forever.
It is a lot about roaming in nature and the social hierarchy that allows one person to say, “Go do this for me and return it here so that I can possess something, which I think is basically about the class and ridicule. I thought the story was somewhat asking this naturally. In terms of context in 2025, I think that when you do horror satire, The pleasure of this is the ability to do both horror and irony. [They] They are the species that live well with metaphors and I think there is an enjoyable opportunity to align the metaphors.
However, I think there is something that is deliberately uninterrupted from the movie that I think we live at unusual times. Perhaps this is what we do at this moment, as you know, we live in an era where the richest man in the world in the White House; It is very similar to everything on the surface. Now I feel that things were more blocked and there were certain degrees of decoration or criteria that were since then made of the window. I felt that I was suitable for me to make something directly and I hope it is distorted, and certainly I thought that her universities had a feeling of violent restorative justice, which seems suitable for the moment we live in.
IO9: Like whales versus yachts! surprising. No, it is so wild that this has just happened to this wavelength, because I was dying from the will [Poulter’s] PETULANT TECH BRO PERFORMANCE. Because I like, Wow, like we see someone like this all the time now, his nature, but he has called this role.
Scherafman: I could not agree more. I am very lucky woe to the movie and offers the performance that I did because I think it is funny, and it is brutal and the summit, but it is also based on this type of human psychology that I think speaks more than, “How do we get here?” What kind of type that we develop as a society and strengthen it in existence? This is Millennial Man-Child Tech Bro, these masters in the universe who believe themselves who believe that they have all the answers through a degree of courage and only go forward.
IO9: He is and everyone who was surrounded by Gina is the funniest people. So it is wild to see it against the worshipers of the Bunker from Richard [E. Grant] Urine [Rudd] With a straight face. This is with Anthony [Carrigan] And the damn watch. I did not pick it on the first scene until Gina indicated that!
Scherafman: That was one of my favorite jokes. He really kills me. The film is inspired An angel to exterminate and [Robert Altman’s] Josford Park. These films are real collection movies, which I love a group movie where you have all these characters standing in the original models of social structures or more things than themselves. And because this group is very possible, it becomes a little larger than life. In this ecosystem content [of a film] It gives people the opportunity to be great from time to time, and to lead to this play and that fun of the camp.
It was fun to fill it, then Gina was a kind of audience alternative. It is our eyes and ears. It is the person with whom we agree with his values. This was a kind of nature of the story, [it] Always [Jenna’s character] Ridley is in the middle of this strange world and dealing with these crazy people, with the Leopold family and their plans. Paul personally recognizes [they] Crazy, but he wants things from crazy people, so he behaves as if they did not do and they are not in the game.
IO9: Touch again on your side on the side of the creature’s feature of this, certainly got John Carpenter and Ambel Al -Mashaer. What is the deepening mechanics of it – by creating alone as it is a mixture of processes and CG, and how do you want to frame it in the story? I am very happy because you were not ashamed to hide them.
Scherafman: I am thinking about the contemporary creature feature, you need to satisfy this to the public, especially with a movie that deliberately invented the creature. Keeping them in the shadow, keeping them in fog, and frustrating them for a while, but by the end of the movie, they were just daylight to walk on the stairs, as you know, and gives you this pleasure “we will actually get a good, good look at this thing.”
IO9: What should actors should behave with all these amazing scenes?
Scherafman: It was one of the things we had. Sometimes we had live horses on a group, we had dolls on a group. We had really beautiful dolls. I love the dolls. They were a lot of fun. Whenever possible, we use dolls. It was really important during the entire process that there was a lot of possible practical elements, not only for the actors but for me to compose footage, I just want to see that as much as possible.
There is definitely VFX, but even when we had VFX, we had bridal heads that were more than the head of the VFX lighting reference. We were continuing in brides who were still walking in the shots until the actors knew the place of the creature, knowing how the creature will look in every situation, and how it would move. There is a real wear for them. There are some shots that are just dolls, clearly, in the movie. It is always exciting when you can find out that it is part of the mystery of filmmaking for a movie like this.
The death of the rhinoceros It opens on Friday.
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2025-03-26 00:33:00
