That Grisly Animated Film Conclusion That Lingers Audiences
Out of all the adult-oriented cartoon movies I’ve personally watched, no other has stuck with me quite like the dread-soaked conclusion of the explicitly bloody as well as overwhelingly transgressive 2022 movie The Unicorn Wars.
In the year 2015, this Spanish filmmaker crafted a dark, melancholy , often savage world with a few small , forlorn twinges of hope.
Although Unicorn Wars feels like it originated from an impulse to expand the medium even more, the filmmaker stated that it was rather a try to convey a universal, multicultural theme regarding “the common origin of all wars.”
This theme is conveyed by means of a squad of colorful pastel bears , clearly based on a famous series of lovable figures.
Being raised in a community built around aggression and the defense industry, many of the bears are consumed by killing the mythical beasts, due to a holy book that claims the bears they were once masters of the forest, until the unicorns forced them out.
Some haven’t fully fallen for the brainwashing, , choose to try out drugs and engage sexually outdoors.
Unlike their cuddly counterparts, these colorful critters have visible genitals , obvious libidos.
For a certain especially vicious, cynical bear, Bluey, the war against unicorns becomes a route to control — and particularly to authority over his softer, nicer brother the character Tubby.
The character acts as a tormentor and a seeming psychopath , and as horror takes over his squad and takes his comrades one by one, he grabs more and more control on his own behalf, in increasingly gory, harmful methods.
Meanwhile, the unicorns are enduring their own terror, in the form of an expanding, destructive monster in their forest.
“At the beginning, it seems like a comedy,” the director commented. “Yet it evolves into a more dramatic and sorrowful film. And in the finale, it’s a terrifying movie.”
The Unicorn Wars starts out feeling a bit like one of the most whimsical features by an iconic animator, that discover a wicked pleasure in letting drawn beings swear, engage in violence, or engage sexually.
Then it turns into more akin to a bleaker movie by that same creator, featuring progressively explicit brutality and a noticeable relation to the actual horror of conflict.
In the finale, it’s an outright Grand Guignol bloodbath.
The horror that turns this an ideal spooky-season watch starts much sooner than one might expect.
Unicorn Wars is one for the devoted gorehounds, for enthusiasts of extreme cinema who desire to view a film they’ve never seen on-screen before, and who can handle a plot that pulls absolutely no punches.
View it with the lights off with no disturbances, and the finale will crawl into your mind and take up residence there.
Availability: Offered for streaming or buying on various streaming sites.