The Gory Cartoon Movie Conclusion That Haunts Fans
Among every mature animated films I’ve ever viewed, no other has stuck with me quite like the dread-soaked finale of the viscerally violent as well as deeply subversive film from 2022 The Unicorn Wars.
In 2015’s, this Spain-based writer-director created a dark, somber , often savage world with several minor , forlorn hints of hope.
While The Unicorn Wars feels like it stemmed from a desire to push the medium further, the filmmaker explained that it was more an attempt to express a widespread, multicultural theme about “the common origin of every conflict.”
This theme is communicated through a squad of colorful pastel bears , obviously inspired by a well-known series of lovable characters.
Maturing in a society built around militarism as well as the war machine, many of the bears are fixated on slaughtering unicorns, thanks to a religious scripture that tells the bears they previously were rulers of the woodland, until the horned beings drove them out.
Some haven’t fully bought into the brainwashing, and prefer to sample substances or engage sexually in the woods.
Unlike their cuddly equivalents, these colorful critters show genitals , clear libidos.
For a particular particularly cruel, skeptical animal, the character Bluey, the war against the unicorns becomes a path to control — and particularly to dominance above his more tender, nicer brother Tubby.
The character acts as a tormentor and a seeming antisocial figure , and when fear takes over his group and kills his fellow soldiers individually, he seizes increasingly control for himself, in increasingly violent, destructive ways.
At the same time, the horned creatures are experiencing their own terror, as a spreading, deadly beast in their woods.
“In the early stages, it feels like a comedy,” the director said. “But then it becomes a more intense and sad movie. And in the finale, it’s a horror film.”
Unicorn Wars starts out feeling a bit like one of the most quirky films from an iconic animator, which find a mischievous joy in allowing drawn beings swear, engage in violence, or have intimate relations.
Then it becomes more akin to a darker work from the same creator, including ever more visual gore , a tangible link to the actual tragedy of conflict.
Ultimately, it becomes an outright Grand Guignol carnage.
The terror that makes the film a perfect Halloween watch starts a lot earlier than indicated.
Unicorn Wars is one for the most dedicated lovers of violence, for lovers of extreme cinema who wish to view something they have not seen on-screen before, and can endure a narrative that pulls no restraint.
View it in a dimly lit space without any distractions, and the finale will crawl into your mind and linger.
How to view: Offered for digital rental or sale on several streaming sites.
