That Grisly Cartoon Movie Conclusion That Stays With Fans
Out of every mature cartoon movies I’ve ever watched, nothing has remained with me quite like the fear-filled finale of the explicitly bloody and deeply subversive 2022 movie The Unicorn Wars.
Back in the year 2015, this Spain-based writer-director developed a grim, bleak , often savage universe that included a few small , desolate hints of optimism.
Although The Unicorn Wars seems like it came from a desire to advance animation further, the director stated that it was rather an attempt to express a universal, cross-cultural message regarding “the common origin of each battle.”
That idea is communicated via a group of brightly hued teddy bears , openly inspired by a well-known series of cuddly characters.
Maturing in a community focused on warmongering and the war machine, a lot of these animals are obsessed with slaughtering the mythical beasts, due to a sacred text that claims the bears they previously were kings of the forest, until these creatures drove them out.
A few haven’t fully bought into the propaganda, , choose to sample drugs or mate in the forest.
In contrast to their friendly equivalents, these bright beings show sexual organs and clear urges.
For one particularly cruel, cynical bear, the character Bluey, the conflict against the unicorns transforms into a route toward dominance — and especially to supremacy over his more tender, kinder brother the character Tubby.
Bluey is a bully and an apparent psychopath , and while fear dominates his group and takes his teammates one by one, he grabs increasingly control on his own behalf, in increasingly bloody, harmful methods.
Meanwhile, these mythical beings are suffering their own terror, through a spreading, deadly beast in their habitat.
“In the early stages, it appears as a lighthearted film,” the director stated. “But then it becomes a more dramatic and sad movie. And ultimately, it’s a horror film.”
The Unicorn Wars begins feeling a bit like one of the most whimsical films from a legendary animator, that discover a naughty glee in letting animated figures curse, shoot each other, or have intimate relations.
Subsequently it turns into closer to a bleaker movie from the same artist, featuring progressively explicit brutality and a noticeable link to genuine horror of conflict.
By the end, it becomes an outright theatrical horror carnage.
The fear which makes this a perfect Halloween movie begins well before than one might expect.
Unicorn Wars is one for the hardcore lovers of violence, for fans of intense movies who desire to see a movie they have not seen on-screen before, and are able to withstand a story that pulls absolutely no punches.
Watch it with the lights off without any distractions, and that ending will crawl under your skin and take up residence there.
How to view: Offered for streaming or buying on several streaming sites.
