Among all the mature cartoon movies I’ve personally viewed, no other has lingered in my mind as much as the dread-soaked ending of a graphically gory as well as overwhelingly transgressive film from 2022 Unicorn Wars.
Back in the year 2015, this Spanish filmmaker created a dark, melancholy , often savage world that included some tiny , forlorn twinges of hope.
Although Unicorn Wars seems like it came from an impulse to advance the medium further, the director stated that it was actually an effort to express a universal, cross-cultural message about “the mutual source of each battle.”
That idea is conveyed through a group of vividly colored bears , clearly based on a famous series of cuddly figures.
Being raised in a culture built around aggression as well as the war machine, numerous these animals are obsessed with exterminating unicorns, thanks to a holy book which states the bears they previously were masters of the woodland, until the horned beings drove them out.
Some did not entirely fallen for the brainwashing, and choose to experiment with substances or mate in the forest.
In contrast to their friendly equivalents, these colorful critters display sexual organs , clear sex drives.
For a certain especially vicious, cynical bear, the character Bluey, the war with the unicorns turns into a route to power — and particularly to authority over his more tender, more compassionate sibling Tubby.
Bluey acts as a tormentor , an apparent psychopath , and while terror overcomes his unit and claims his teammates one by one, he takes increasingly power personally, in increasingly bloody, harmful methods.
At the same time, these mythical beings are enduring their own terror, in the form of a spreading, harmful creature in their forest.
“Initially, it feels like a lighthearted film,” the director commented. “Yet it evolves into a more intense and sad film. And in the finale, it’s a horror film.”
The Unicorn Wars begins resembling among the playful features from a legendary filmmaker, that uncover a naughty glee in letting cartoon characters curse, shoot each other, or have intimate relations.
Then it turns into closer to a darker work from that director, featuring progressively graphic violence and a tangible link to genuine suffering of conflict.
By the end, it is an outright theatrical horror massacre.
The terror which makes the film a Halloween-friendly movie kicks in much sooner than that description suggests.
The Unicorn Wars is one for the most dedicated lovers of violence, for lovers of extreme cinema who want to view something they haven’t ever viewed until now, and who can handle a plot that offers no restraint.
View it with the lights off without any distractions, and that ending will crawl into your mind and take up residence there.
Where to watch: Offered for digital rental or sale on various online services.
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