Griff internalises much of his frustration with his employers before finally letting it out, and that moment gave Anthony Carrigan the opportunity to delve further into physical, silent comedy. "It may look simple, but you really have to build a physical language that tells a story. So I studied a lot of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin," Carrigan said.
The trailer closes on an image of the black unicorn growling right up to Ridley's face, with Ridley looking directly at the camera while the unicorn is filmed in profile — a clear echo of the well-known shot in Alien³ where the xenomorph growls at Ripley's face. And, of course, Ridley's name is not only the same as that of the director of the original Alien but is also only one letter different from Ripley.
Alex Scharfman had only just begun the casting process for Jenna Ortega shortly before her breakout Netflix series Wednesday propelled her into the upper echelons of the industry. "We sent [Death of a Unicorn] to her the weekend before Wednesday premiered [in November 2022]," Scharfman told The Hollywood Reporter. "So I don't know what we would've done if we didn't get Jenna. It's such a demanding role, and she gives an extraordinary performance."
Alex Scharfman's first feature as director.
Writer-director Alex Scharfman made it clear his aim was more than simply pairing incongruous elements. "It was really important to me that we didn't do a cynical film. That is, a monster film where the monster happens to be a unicorn," Scharfman told Polygon over a video call. "It was really important to me that the film felt true to unicorns, both in terms of their lore, but also in terms of the emotional valence that they carry." Scharfman's insistence on that approach — positioning Elliot and Ridley as the protagonists and the Leopolds as ruthlessly capitalist antagonists — left some producers baffled during early pitches. "There were definitely people who at some points were like, 'Oh, why are you dealing with any of this emotional stuff, or any of this satire stuff? What if it's just four mates on a hunting trip, and they kill a unicorn?' And I was always like, 'That's not a unicorn film, then. That's a film with a unicorn in it, but it's not about a unicorn.'" According to Scharfman, the notion of a story about people who accidentally kill a unicorn came first, and the horror element followed. "I didn't really know what to do with the story," he recalled, "and then somewhere in the middle of telling the story to my friend, I just blurted out, And then a bunch more unicorns show up and they kill everybody! I'd never had the thought before, and it was only in the moment of saying it to my friend that I realised, Oh, wow, this is a way in to do a creature feature."
Regarding the ambiguous ending, director Alex Scharfman confirmed that aspect of the puzzle himself, saying, "They're rather like, 'Yes, fine. You're being held captive; we'll smash up the car and see what happens,' but they certainly don't grasp the social implications or the mechanical ones."
Alex Scharfman has observed that creature-feature films frequently carry a marked anti-capitalist undercurrent, from Alien and Jaws to Jurassic Park. That line of thought drew him back to his original idea of making a film about a unicorn. "To make a proper unicorn film, I think you must engage not just with the lore but with the emotional weight these creatures hold for people and the sense of symbolism attached to them. It needs to speak to what they are and also to why they've resonated with humans for over two millennia. If they were merely monsters in the woods, we wouldn't have such deep emotional associations — they stand for something we cannot attain, they reflect our own corruption, and they symbolise the thing which, to our shame, we as a society destroy. That, I think, speaks to all of us," he said. For Scharfman, respecting the "emotional valence" of an idea that has endured for thousands of years was not simply about factual accuracy or meeting an audience's expectations; it was about tapping into an already powerful cultural symbol. He laughed that, in conversation, people often respond, 'I didn't know unicorns had to do with class commentary or socialist commentary,' and added that, yes, of course they do — they always have. That's precisely the point.
Paul Rudd and Tea' Leoni both made guest appearances in series 4 of Only Murders in the Building.
The sensors the scientists employ to register the creatures' presence give off the same sound as the motion trackers in Бөтен 2 (1986).
Writer-director Alex Scharfman thoroughly researched unicorn mythology and folklore, tracing sources back to Roman historians and the Old Testament. He also closely studied the unicorn tapestries shown in the film. They're genuine and are housed at the Met Cloisters in New York. "I grew up in the suburbs around New York and used to go on school trips to the Cloisters, where those works are preserved," Scharfman said. "They must have been buried in my subconscious — at some point I forgot about them, but while researching the film I came across them again and thought, 'oh right, those things!'" Woven by an unknown hand around the turn of the 16th century and kept in a Parisian aristocrat's residence until they were almost destroyed during the French Revolution, the tapestries became a guiding touchstone for much of the film. Jenna Ortega even described them as a "cheat sheet" for understanding their movie.
Alex Scharfman outlined why Dr. Bhatia meets such a brutal end in the film. The writer-director conceded she was "largely undeserving" of that outcome and that the scene drew "a big reaction" at the film's SXSW premiere and at preview screenings, yet because she took part in experiments on the young unicorn she still becomes a target. He said: "Well, the Sunita one gets a big reaction, certainly, because she seems largely undeserving. She does steal a vial of unicorn horn, so the idea being they're playing in absolutes. A small infraction is still an infraction, and that counts."
While at university and for some time afterwards, Alex Scharfman worked for producer Lars Knudsen at the production company Knudsen co‑founded, Parts & Labor Films. Knudsen later launched Square Peg with Ari Aster, and that banner helped produce this film. It was also at Parts & Labor that Scharfman watched Robert Eggers put the finishing touches to The Witch and work on his earliest drafts of Nosferatu. The film’s intricate unicorn lore reflects Scharfman borrowing Eggers’s research-driven approach. As Scharfman puts it, "It wasn’t that I acted as his research associate or anything — rather I absorbed his research passively, read his scripts and saw where his thinking was heading for his next project; it’s quite remarkable how research-based his process is." He says that revelation shaped the philosophical outlook during the early stages of development, and that he wanted [Death of a Unicorn] to be a modern monster film adapted from unicorn lore of antiquity.
Writer-director Alex Scharfman revealed that John Carpenter had originally been lined up to compose the film’s score. Scharfman said Carpenter is a major influence on him as a filmmaker and on this particular film, and that he admires him greatly — which is why he sent him the script with a personal letter asking if he would come on board, and Carpenter graciously agreed. As they moved further into production it became clear the film was seeking a different sonic palette from much of Carpenter’s work with synth, guitar and drums — not that that style isn’t excellent, but the picture was asking for a more organic and varied soundscape. The question then became how to get the score to the place the film needed it to be. Scharfman also noted you can still sense Carpenter’s fingerprints as a storyteller throughout the film, and the final score contains moments that carry that Carpenter feeling he admires so much.
Perhaps the most significant tapestry, "The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden", is notable as much for what it leaves out as for what it shows. "Jenna wears a red hoodie throughout the film, which has a very unusual shape," Alex Scharfman observed. "That was very much inspired by what the maiden wears in this tapestry, with those very wide sleeves. We actually found a hoodie by a Japanese designer that they made in grey and other colours, but we asked them to make a custom version for us in red. It had a rather interesting, cloak-like silhouette." Discovering the tapestry helped shape Scharfman's vision of the Ridley character: "It made me wonder, 'What would a pure-hearted maiden look like in 2025?' I began to picture a Gen‑Z leftist protesting on a university campus — someone with very firm morals and ideals." Yet it was the tapestry's very incompleteness that allowed him to invent darker details. "Seen in person, it's only about a third of the size of the others," he points out. "That's because it was badly damaged. It was recovered after the French Revolution and is thought to have been harmed then. At one point it was even used over a sack of potatoes to keep them warm in winter, so it became utterly tattered." The surviving fragment is split into two pieces and lacks key information, including the very maiden in its title. "If you look at the bottom right corner, just beneath the unicorn, you can see a woman's hand," Scharfman says. "So the maiden the unicorn appears to be surrendering to isn't actually shown in the tapestry, which is quite perplexing. There is another woman who seems to be a handmaiden working with the maiden who acts as bait. I thought about putting that into the film, but I decided that would be too confusing to explain — that there is a maiden in the tapestry who isn't the one it surrenders to, which would imply an off-screen maiden we never meet." That absence, however, gave Scharfman licence to propose a more complete "lost tapestry" within the film that depicts much of the monster-movie mayhem to come. "We had brilliant artists create amazing pieces that take the figures and style of the medieval tapestries and weave in scenes from our film," he explains. "So we expanded this fragment into a so-called lost tapestry that includes many of the kills and fun elements of the horror language we use in the film, but rendered in a medieval context." It also permitted him to rethink how the sequence of tapestries should be read: whereas many historians treat the next two tapestries as the story's conclusion, in Scharfman's film the true ending is this tapestry, with the maiden and unicorn at rest after all the death and carnage.
When ringing potential purchasers about the limited supply of a healing drug derived from the unicorn, Shepard (Will Poulter) mentions "MbS" and the "crown prince," an allusion to Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He is the heir apparent to the Saudi throne, the seventh son of King Salman and the grandson of the country's founder, Ibn Saud.
In a different tapestry, the kingsmen descend on the poor unicorn as it attempts to flee across a stream. The scene foreshadows the greater carnage to come, and, right down to the hunters' costumes — beginning with the gentleman tending the dog in the lower-left corner — the image informed many of costume designer Andrea Flesch's creations for the film. Alex Scharfman observes that there are lots of small textures and details, such as Will Poulter's swimwear. There are striking vertical stripes on one character's trousers, an influence that shaped Will's look. Costume-wise, Paul wears blue throughout the film and Jenna wears red, the two moving toward each other (which produces purple); the Leopold family, played by Richard, Téa and Will, favour gold — their palette being gold, white and black — and the tapestries present figures in red, blue and gold against abundant green backgrounds. Even the scientists' lab coats are fashioned to echo the high collars of the late Middle Ages.
Alex Scharfman said that he had also modelled one of his shots — of Odell leading Elliot and the other characters into the wilderness whilst hunting a unicorn — on this tapestry.
Director Alex Scharfman told Screen Rant that Richard E. Grant's death elicited the strongest reaction and was "an absolute joy to film. He was brilliant — making the noises and spitting blood. It's achieved with a blend of practical and digital techniques: a practical horn beneath his head, a puppet in the foreground, and then a digital horn pushing up through his mouth and out of the top. You can see blood on the horn as it slides up, which I'd written into the script, hoping it would work."
A principal challenge with the unicorns was their colouration. They were a blend of white and darker sheens, which, visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff said, required special consideration. He explained, "we discussed the unicorns' colour extensively. From my previous work on white creatures, I made the point that a white creature isn't truly white — it becomes the colour of whatever environment surrounds it. Right at the beginning of the shot we carried out experiments rendering the fur towards a mid-grey with a very strong ambient occlusion pass to 'pull' the details out. If it becomes too dark, all the details vanish, and if it becomes too bright, everything tends to mush together."
It is worth noting that, although the Cloisters and many art historians arrange the Unicorn Tapestries in a generally accepted sequence, the precise official order is not definitively known. "There isn't, like, a 'number one' or a 'number two' on the back of them," Alex Scharfman explains, "so people have put them in an order that seems to make sense. I completely agree that this works as the first one, but one thing I found amusing about the film is that they're not necessarily presented in the correct order." Nevertheless, most consider this to be the opening piece because it noticeably lacks both a unicorn and a king or lord; instead it depicts hounds and retainers approaching an imposing wilderness. "What I particularly like about this tapestry is the sheer amount of foliage and this overwhelming sense of nature," Scharfman says. "That is something people often discuss regarding the Unicorn Tapestries: the way nature is portrayed." Yet it is the human figures in this tapestry that largely shaped the focus of Death of a Unicorn, the film about a CEO cast as a feudal lord who summons a prospective servant, Paul Rudd's Elliot Kintner, to his court. "I think it's significant that [the Lord] is absent from this one," Scharfman adds. "He sends out his minions to fetch from the woods the thing he desires and bring it back for him. So I truly think that when you start delving into the tapestries, and more broadly into medieval unicorn mythology and lore, you arrive at a clear class commentary of that nature."
One of the unicorn tapestries depicts a unicorn cleansing the water of an enchanted fountain concealed deep within the wood. The piece suggests the unicorn’s horn, and perhaps its blood, possess restorative, even healing, powers — an idea some scholars read as a reference to Christ. The belief that a unicorn’s body could heal predates these tapestries by centuries and was already central to Alex Scharfman’s concept for the developing film when he rediscovered them. Scharfman laughs that the fountain itself is peculiar: he cannot explain why it stands in the woods — the unicorn is not purifying a running stream but water spilling from a fountain. Wanting to echo that image, he had a near-identical fountain modelled in the courtyard of the Leopold estate, placing the unicorn discovery at that precise spot for most characters. That same tapestry also influenced the choice of the villains’ name. Scharfman points out that among the other creatures drinking from the water are lions, and the antagonists in the film are the Leopold family — a pharmaceutical dynasty. The name “Leopold” alludes to Leo the lion from astrology, and the Leopolds’ company crest likewise features a lion. Traditionally, lions and unicorns are depicted as adversaries in unicorn lore, Scharfman notes, yet here they seem more like allies, or at least content to share the water the unicorn has purified.
One of the tapestry motifs that begins to shape the film's odd, bemused atmosphere is the orange tree hanging high above the scene and the distant castle with its red roof. Both of those elements helped define the appearance and garden of the Leopold estate, which the director is keen to draw our attention to. Yet it is the brutal slaughter and deaths depicted in the tapestry's foreground that seize the viewer's eye. "This was one of the first instances of unicorn violence I'd seen in any artwork," Alex Scharfman recalls. "When you examine the tapestry closely, you can see it driving its horn into the dog's intestines. It's a hunting dog, so I think that could be self-defence. But if you look very closely or have a high-resolution version, the wound is extremely gory in the detail it shows." Scharfman admits that tearing out a character's entrails, as he portrayed happening to poor Belinda, was his own embellishment, but "there are accounts of them using their teeth to bite people, so it felt like it wasn't that large a leap." He adds, "They also kick with their hind legs, and if you go back to historical descriptions of unicorns you'll find a great deal of violence and very graphic imagery. They were not passive creatures at all — they would bite and kick and use their horn to gore people."
The final two surviving tapestries offer an intriguing, if somewhat detached, coda to their narrative: initially the unicorn appears to be dead, presumably killed by hunters after the maiden distracted the mythical creature long enough for them to approach—then, in the subsequent panel, the beast seems to be resurrected and curiously content in captivity. Of the earlier tableau's influences, the Lady of the Manor's golden gown informed Leoni's cream-coloured suits in the film. Scharfman also draws attention to the posture of the unicorn's corpse draped across a horse at the centre of the scene. "When the unicorn is killed [and taken to] the house in our film, it has a similar pose where it's kind of draped out the window of a car," the director says. Thus, perhaps historians have misread the sequence of the tapestries, and this could actually be the first panel, which, like the film, sets the stage for the carnage that follows. In any event, the commonly accepted final image of the tale supplies at least the oblique motive for the film's most avaricious Leopold, Will Poulter's nepobaby Shepherd. "The unicorn in captivity, that is the vision that Will Poulter's character is going after," Scharfman explains. "This idea that we can own this thing and possess it forever, and it will be ours within these confines." Yet the actual tapestry admits of several readings. The director adds, "What's curious about it is that when you look closely, the chain is very thin. It seems like it could break and it could get out, but it doesn't. So there are questions about the symbolism. Is it there by choice? Is it being held captive? Who knows? But that is his vision of the future: if [Shep] can possess them and contain them, then he will have a limitless supply of unicorns." The film concludes with the beasts running free and even attacking the police vehicle that is transporting Elliot and Ridley. Nevertheless, Scharfman doesn't believe his protagonists are in grave danger. "I think they're there to try and help Jenna and Paul's characters," Scharfman reflects of his unicorns, "but I also think they don't really understand how cars work or how the police operate, or how any of these things actually function, because they exist outside society." Still, should either Ridley or Elliot perish in the ensuing crash, it's not the end of the world. "Worst-case scenario, they can resurrect some people."
Early on, the team examined various approaches to filming sequences that included unicorns. Visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff said, "We experimented with prosthetic attachments on real horses and looked at simply shooting real horses and altering them. In the end we went with computer-generated unicorns, of course, but we filmed using a blend that included prosthetic puppets made by Filmefx, mainly for the foal. Filmefx took our designs and fashioned a latex mould with a little internal armature. We wound up building a full version of the foal that was used on the ground and on a table. They also made a head for the adult unicorn with an articulated jaw and a somewhat articulated neck. The horns were produced as separate props from our 3-D files."
The unicorns produce the same sounds and hunt in much the same manner as the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Some shots and on-screen killings are nearly identical to sequences from that film.
To help define the unicorns' movements, visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff led an emotion-analysis exploration phase with Zoic Studios that used horses as the primary reference. Orloff explained, "for a time we were planning to use some mocap'd horses, but we discovered we couldn't quite capture the exact motion we wanted. As the creature's body mechanics evolved, we realised we would have to alter the motion-capture so heavily that we opted to animate everything by keyframe instead. Patricia Binga was the animation supervisor and did a brilliant job assembling tests during the creature-design process. That phase also involved dynamics tests to determine the appropriate fur thickness and which fur patterns worked best."
For the moment when Ridley experiences her cosmic visions (a phenomenon that Elliot also later encounters) visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff said he and the director drew on a wide range of space‑film references. He explained "the aim was to remain in the territory of the Stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or the transit in Contact, where it isn’t really clear what you are witnessing because what you are seeing is something you can’t truly fathom. However, we also wanted to include some authentic space imagery, similar to the nebulae seen in James Webb Space Telescope images." Orloff crafted the cosmic sequences using ripomatics and animatics. The final imagery, completed by Zoic Studios, involved generating renders in Cinema 4D. "What we were trying to show was their journey into the source of the unicorn's power," Orloff said. "We tucked in a few Easter eggs; one is when they shoot through the eye and are ejected out. If you look closely, the nebula there is actually derived from the model of the unicorn's horn."
When visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff joined the production, he put together several decks, reference images and mood boards for the creatures, working closely with concept artist Paul Mellender. "The director, alex, wanted them to feel prehistoric," Orloff explained. "Like a real cryptid that the unicorn legend might have been based on, but as if it were an actual animal that had lived in our world while remaining hidden from human view. That notion of it having existed for so long steered us away from the modern show horse with a horn and towards more of a predatory, apex-predator aesthetic. We studied prehistoric horses alongside lions and tigers, blending those elements to create a singular creature."
In addition to the name and sound nods to Aliens, mentioned elsewhere, the sequence in which the principal antagonists arm themselves and begin the hunt is almost a shot-for-shot recreation of that film’s first encounter with the xenomorphs.
To capture scenes with close contact between the unicorns and the actors, visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff said 'every trick in the book' was employed. He went on to describe, "for instance, there is a sequence in which Téa Leoni's character is impaled through the shoulder by a horn emerging from behind a bookcase, which then flings her around. For that stunt we had a practical piece attached to represent the rear of the horn protruding from her back, plus prosthetic blood. We also shot a separate plate of the creature bursting through. Ultimately we produced a CG version, but kept as much practical material as possible. We left the practical prop in place, retained some of the on-set effects such as the books falling and the dust, and enhanced those with additional toppling books and extra blood. We also re-timed the action in VFX so the stunt read as more violent. Later in the same sequence, the unicorn tears out the character's entrails. A puppet in that shot pulls out some prop innards. We preserved the physical elements on her torso that interacted with her, while the gore inside the creature's mouth was computer-generated and matched to the external gore."
