This bonkers film about killer unicorns is less far-fetched than you’d think

Spoiler alert: This story contains major plot points from Death of a Unicorn.

Unicorns don’t exist. They’re mythical creatures – fabled horses with magical horns that supposedly cure the incurable. So, when they appear in Death of a Unicorn, a dark comedy featuring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, it’s safe to assume we’re dabbling in make-believe.

This is further confirmed once the unicorns begin crushing, disembowelling and impaling anyone who threatens to exploit their curative powers. Unicorns – creatures usually associated with rainbows and butterflies – being violent? That’s surely double make-believe.

Death of a Unicorn is a bonkers film about killer unicorns, but it’s drawing on real-life source material.Credit: A24

But the film has its roots in more historical truth than you’d think.

Written and directed by Alex Scharfman, Death of a Unicorn is heavily inspired by a series of mysterious real-life artworks known as The Unicorn Tapestries or Hunt of the Unicorn. In these tapestries, of which there are seven, a unicorn is depicted purifying water using its horn before being hunted down by kingsmen (armed soldiers). The unicorn defends itself, goring a dog and kicking a hunter. A young maiden then lulls it into surrender, whereby it’s confined on the castle grounds.

Replace the kingsmen with a money-obsessed family and the young maiden with a liberal arts student (Ortega), and you’ve essentially got Death of a Unicorn. Like many before him, Scharfman was drawn to these tapestries, so much so that he created a story that runs in close parallel to the artworks’ narrative until the closing scenes.

In the film, a widowed father (Rudd) and his daughter (Ortega) accidentally hit a unicorn with their car while travelling to his wealthy employer’s estate. They stash the injured animal in the boot and later reveal it to their hosts, who kill it and then try to take advantage of the creature’s healing powers, believing it will bring them immense fame and fortune. However, the daughter discovers mysterious tapestries that appear to predict impending carnage once the unicorn’s parents arrive to reclaim their child.

It’s not the first time the tapestries have appeared on-screen, having featured in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and even Family Guy. So, what is it about these pieces that’s so enticing on screen?

“For people who want to evoke the kind of mystery, glamour, eroticism, allure and courtly splendour of the medieval period, nothing can do it better than this mythical creature, the beautiful maiden and the courtly hunters,” says Peter McNeil, a distinguished professor in design history at University of Technology Sydney.

Often considered some of the greatest surviving masterpieces of medieval European art, The Unicorn Tapestries remain shrouded in mystery. They were likely designed in Paris and woven in Brussels around 1495 – a period when unicorns were believed to exist – for presentation in a grand salon, though McNeil says no one can be sure who commissioned or created them. Around the French Revolution, they disappeared, only to resurface in the 20th century.

A brief history of the unicorn

The word unicorn comes from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word “re’em” in the Bible, McNeil says. Though it now translates to “wild ox”, it used to translate to unicorn.

However, it was European folklore that significantly spurred belief in the horned creatures. Medieval stories and artworks highlighted unicorns’ healing powers, namely their ability to purify liquid and cure illness, as seen in The Unicorn Tapestries.

During this period, Vikings and other northern-sailing tribes often crafted cups out of narwhal tusks, selling them as “unicorn horn” to the ruling elite. They claimed the healing powers of the unicorn horn meant any liquid held in such a cup would be purified.

However, once the period of Enlightenment began, McNeil says scientific proof began to outweigh superstition and folklore, leading to diminished belief in the unicorn. Though now considered mythical, they continue to live on through contemporary pop culture, including films like The Last Unicorn (1982) and Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985).

“The tapestries lay out a world that doesn’t exist any more, a mysterious world we remain fascinated by,” McNeil says. “They’re ambiguous, but also beautiful, and therefore very powerful. We don’t really understand the Mona Lisa, for example. There’s a certain allure to that.”

That’s not to say art historians haven’t tried making sense of them. Now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the tapestries have been interpreted as an allegory for the Passion of Jesus, a theory Death of a Unicorn explicitly references.

“At the time, Europe was dominated by Christianity, and the basis of Christianity is the story of the death and resurrection of Christ,” McNeil says. “The hunting of the unicorn would have recalled the death of Christ on the cross, followed by his subsequent resurrection since the unicorn suddenly comes back to life at the end of the scene after being stabbed.”

However, others consider them more as ruminations on the human condition. The young maiden’s ability to calm the unicorn could point to a general desire to overcome the ferocity of nature through human culture, says Dr Mark De Vitis, a lecturer in early modern art at the University of Sydney.

“It could even mean overcoming aspects of one’s own nature, or gendered nature, in that there’s the active and the physical, and there’s the tender, the romantic or emotional,” he says. “They also contrast physicality, violence and ferociousness with our potential to tame something that used to be wild so that it’s at peace and contributes something to human culture.”

The unicorn has existed as a story for thousands of years now, De Vitis says, yet we still find it relevant today. “There’s this real human aspect to the myth of the unicorn – it’s telling us something about ourselves and about our culture.”

It’s thanks to this ambiguity and universality that The Unicorn Tapestries continue to thrive within pop culture. Death of a Unicorn uses the artworks’ general structure to explore the corruption of wealth, class divides and the dangers of unchecked ambition. It takes some hefty creative license by the end of the film – instead of being peacefully confined, as in the tapestries, the unicorns are freed and rip the greedy family members to shreds. But De Vitis says it’s surprisingly still not that far-fetched.

“They haven’t always been a pretty horned horse with rainbows, cupcakes and puppies. They were thought of as something from nature that needed to be tamed, sometimes described as bull-like. So, the idea of them as dangerous is nothing new.”

Unicorns still don’t exist – Death of a Unicorn hasn’t changed that. But it does remind us of the magical creatures’ enduring impact on human culture. As long as the tapestries continue to astound onlookers, the unicorn will keep rearing its horn.

Death of a Unicorn is in cinemas now.

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