Death of a Unicorn opens in theaters Friday, March 28. This review is based on a screening at the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival.

There’s an intriguing premise with the potential for entertaining moral conundrums at the center of Death of a Unicorn. First, corporate lawyer Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) hits a mysterious creature. Then, when it turns out the animal’s corpse has healing powers, Elliot and his conscientious teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) must figure out how to hide the accident from Elliot’s wealthy pharmaceutical boss. Unfortunately, this synopsis is about as far, as deep, and as detailed as it gets for the latest horror comedy from indie powerhouse A24. Despite featuring a number of fun performances – especially that of Will Poulter as the pharma CEO’s wily failson – Alex Scharfman’s feature debut quickly plateaus.

Death of a Unicorn’s emotional throughlines all seem to end where they begin. In the opening scenes, Elliot and Ridley land in the Canadian mountains by plane; as the college teen falls asleep on her father’s shoulder, only for him to shimmy out of the way to grab fallen legal documents, causing her to hit her head on the armrest. It’s a wonderful, hilarious encapsulation of their estranged dynamic. Ridley’s mother has passed away; in response, Elliot threw himself into his work, irrevocably changing his relationship with Ridley. Now, with his ailing boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant) looking for a proxy before he dies, Elliot has the chance to set Ridley up for life, but on the condition that he prove himself a family man as well.

En route to the executive’s isolated mansion, the father-daughter duo, distracted by their bickering, mows down a white horse with a single horn – a creature the characters collectively, and reluctantly, decide to refer to as a unicorn. This leads to strange, fantastical happenings – including hypnotic visions and magical healing – but not before some delightful, human-on-apparent-unicorn violence intended to put the injured creature out of its misery. Its bright purple blood splatters everywhere, but the imperfectly realized CGI beast (forgivable, considering the ruckus it causes) isn’t quite dead, which further complicates Elliot’s already knotty interview with Odell.

This setup has all the makings of a story that evolves in delightful ways, but Death of a Unicorn never progresses past the (initially amusing) philosophical debates kicked off by the Leopolds’ discovery of their guests’ fairytale roadkill. It’s a conversation-heavy film until its creature-feature final act, but none of that jabbering changes the minds of anyone on screen – least of all Ridley, the film’s ostensible conscience. Ortega delivers a wonderfully lived-in performance as a baggily-dressed youth withdrawn from the world, defined entirely by her activist leaning. She’s an actor capable of injecting great thought and subtext into any scenario, but Death of a Unicorn is too flimsy even for her talents, rendering Ridley something of a blank slate who ends up so unwavering as to be grating. (It's a bad sign when the voice of reason and compassion in an attempted cinematic takedown of ruthless billionaires makes you consider siding with the billionaires.) Then again, what else is there to do than consider alternatives that the film and its characters do not, since all its drama, comedy, and thrills swiftly flatline.

Bearing the brunt of Ortega’s ire, the typically entertaining Rudd delivers an exceptionally plain, checked-out performance. And that’s a shame, considering the color the rest of the cast manages to bring to the screen: Grant is delightfully animated, as is Téa Leoni as Odell’s opportunistic wife. Jessica Hynes and Anthony Carrigan, meanwhile, add lively dimensions as the family’s stone-faced enforcer and fed-up butler. But it’s Poulter who comes closest to rescuing the film from its malaise. Nearly every line he delivers is hilarious, owing to how deftly and energetically he balances his character’s slimy scheming with the insecurities of someone who’s never made it on his own. He’s also the only actor whose performance seems to evolve or transform in any way, even if this is courtesy the drug-like properties of a magical substance.

There’s some amount of imagination at play, and A24 is hardly in the wrong for throwing its weight behind a first-time filmmaker. The unicorn’s designs are imaginative, as are its magical abilities – even if their discovery is rendered useless by characters making erratic choices, and losing their key motivations when convenient. Its horror elements tend to be inconsistent, especially in tone. While some sequences are meant to pay homage to Jurassic Park, the outcome tends to align with that film’s lesser reboot, Jurassic World: Cartoonish villains and complex, relatable characters alike suffer vicious deaths designed for our enjoyment and applause. As a result, some of the intended revelry feels icky.

Scharfman clearly has a knack for staging and blocking physical comedy, even if the way he actually captures it is lacking here. The eye is seldom drawn to what’s funniest, but rather, to what happens to be in the center of the frame. There’s also the ingenious conceit of the creature’s presence messing with electricity, which allows the film to seamlessly switch into haunted house mode when necessary. However, the tension and humor of these sequences don’t adequately rise and fall, and the editing is squeamish about what little cartoonish gore it features. This renders Death of a Unicorn a passive and ultimately tiring experience, one that gestures frequently towards fun and interesting ideas, but rarely follows through on them.

If you decided to hold off on Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs to see if AMD's new offerings were up to snuff, then you made the right choice. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards are the new mid-range champions of this generation. Both cards offer phenomenal performance while undercutting their Nvidia competition in price. They go up for sale on March 6 starting at 6am PST. The Radeon RX 9070 starts at $550 and the 9070 XT starts at $600. Let's just hope that - unlike Nvidia - AMD has its supply under control.

The jury's out as to whether or not inventory will hold, but given how well positioned these GPUs are in the stack, I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up selling out quickly. I've listed below the best places to pick up one of these cards. The current trend is that if you're set on purchasing a GPU at launch, you don't have the luxury of choosing your brand or model. If you see any in stock at a price you're happy with, buy now and think later.

TLDR; This article assumes, not guarantees, there are actual graphics cards to purchase. You may stumble on this page and find out that every model at every retailer is sold out.

Quick Links: Radeon RX 9070 / 9070 XT Graphics Card Listings

How much will these new AMD GPUs cost?

One of the main reasons why these new AMD cards are sure to be popular is the price to performance ratio. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 costs the same as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 yet offers superior performance and more VRAM for the same price. Even more impressively, the Radeon RX 9070 XT trades blows with the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and costs $150 less. We'll see if these suggested retail prices hold, but if they do, the winner is a no-brainer.

• AMD Radeon RX 9070 - $550
• AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT - $600

Where should I preorder these new AMD GPUs?

The retailers below are your best chances to score one of the new AMD GPUs. Four of the retailers (Best Buy, Newegg, Amazon, and B&H Photo) will have listings online. One retailer (Micro Center) will only carry them in-store. There's no way to tell exactly how many units are available at each retailer, however a Wccftech article claims that "AMD and AIBs are reportedly shipping more Radeon RX 9070 XTs than all Nvidia's RTX 50 series GPUs combined."

If you want to maximize your chance of picking up one of the new AMD cards on launch day, your best bet is to check each and every retailer and buy the first card that lets you proceed all the way through checkout. Just remember that potentially thousands of other people will be clicking on the same link as you.

Based on past GPU launches, I suspect that one of your best chances of purchasing the new AMD graphics cards online will be at Best Buy. This retailer should carry every brand that will be available at launch, including Sapphire, XFX, Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, and Powercolor.

Best Buy's available inventory depends on your region; if you're fortunate enough to live in an area where graphics cards in general might not be in high demand, you'll have a much better chance of scoring a GPU here than anywhere else. Also important to note is that Best Buy GPU orders generally ship out quickly since they're either listed as in stock or out of stock (no "backorders" here). That means you'll likely receive your card in hand within a week.

Newegg

You'll also definitely want to prioritize Newegg. Like Best Buy, Newegg is expected to carry every make and model of the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards. Newegg is an authorized reseller, so as long as you are buying from Newegg direct and not a marketplace vendor, you'll be eligible for the full manufacturer's warranty. Similar to Best Buy, orders usually ship out within the week, unless the product is backordered or out of stock.

Even if the standalone cards are sold out, Newegg may sell these AMD GPUs as part of a bundle kit that includes any combination of a motherboard, CPU, RAM, or power supply. If you're working on a DIY computer build and haven't purchased all of your components, this might work to your advantage. These bundle offers do eventually sell out, but at a slower rate than the standalone cards.

Micro Center (In-Store)

Without a doubt, Micro Center will be your best chance at getting an AMD GPU on launch day if you happen to live close by to a local store. Micro Center will most assuredly reserve all their GPU sales for in-store customers. Even if you are local, though, you should still get there as early as possible (ideally when the store opens).

We reviewed both AMD graphics cards

We rated the AMD Radeon RX 9070 an 8/10. It costs the same as the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 but it performs better in the majority of games we tested and also includes more VRAM (16GB vs 12GB), which should supposedly make it more futureproof. From our tests, it draws about the same amount of power as the RTX 5070.

We rated the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT a "perfect" 10/10. Even though it costs $150 less than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, the 9070 XT beats it out in several of the games we tested. In a few benchmarks, the results aren't even close. The 9070 XT also has 16GB of VRAM, the same as the 9070 and 5070 Ti. On the flip side, it does draw more power and get hotter on average compared to the RTX 5070 Ti.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

If you decided to hold off on Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs to see if AMD's new offerings were up to snuff, then you made the right choice. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards are the new mid-range champions of this generation. Both cards offer phenomenal performance while undercutting their Nvidia competition in price.

Right now, Amazon has one 9070 XT GPU in stock, and it's shipped and sold by Amazon instead of a marketplace vendor, so it's legit. Note that Powercolor is charging a $100 premium over the $599 MSRP.

Powercolor Reaper AMD Radeon RX 9700 XT GPU in Stock