“Death of a Unicorn” follows Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his teenage daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) as they endure a nightmarish weekend at the estate of Elliot’s boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). After accidentally running over a unicorn foal with their car, they become entangled in a surreal and violent chain of events: desperate to save their dying offspring, the unicorn parents go on a brutal rampage to retrieve the foal from the clutches of scientists eager to exploit its magical, cancer-curing powers—slaughtering anyone who stands in their way.

Between the bizarre premise of life-saving unicorn horn dust, mildly funny jokes about class-consciousness, and a sometimes out of place all-star cast, director Alex Scharfman crafts an oddly compelling horror-comedy. While the film sometimes suffers from stilted line deliveries and uninspired cinematography, Scharfman’s directorial debut delivers 102 minutes of unapologetically gory, over-the-top entertainment.

Though tonally uneven at times, “Death of a Unicorn” embraces its absurdity with a mix of fairy-tale whimsy and blood-soaked carnage. Scharfman’s willingness to push it to grotesque extremes makes it a bold, if imperfect, entry in the genre. Fans of splatter horror with a taste for the bizarre will likely find plenty to enjoy; those seeking a more conventional horror film might be left bewildered.