The Grisly Animated Film Conclusion That Stays With Audiences
Among every adult-oriented animated films I have ever viewed, nothing has stuck with me as much as the terror-laced conclusion of the graphically gory and highly provocative film from 2022 The Unicorn Wars.
In 2015’s, this Spanish filmmaker created a grim, bleak and frequently brutal world that included some tiny , desolate twinges of optimism.
While The Unicorn Wars feels like it stemmed from an impulse to push the medium further, the director stated that it was actually an effort to communicate a widespread, cross-cultural message regarding “the mutual source of each battle.”
This theme is expressed through a band of vividly colored bears , openly modeled after a popular line of lovable characters.
Growing up in a culture built around warmongering as well as the war machine, many of these creatures are consumed by killing the mythical beasts, thanks to a religious scripture that tells the bears they previously were kings of the woodland, until the horned beings forced them out.
Others have not completely fallen for the propaganda, and prefer to sample narcotics or engage sexually in the woods.
Unlike their friendly equivalents, these bright beings display genitals and obvious sex drives.
For one especially vicious, skeptical animal, the bear named Bluey, the war with the unicorns turns into a route to power — and particularly to authority above his more tender, nicer brother the character Tubby.
This bear behaves aggressively and an obvious psychopath , and as horror overcomes his unit and claims his fellow soldiers one by one, he grabs more and more control personally, via progressively violent, destructive ways.
Simultaneously, these mythical beings are suffering their own nightmare, through a growing, harmful creature in their habitat.
“At the beginning, it feels like a comedy,” the filmmaker stated. “Yet it turns into a more serious and sad movie. And by the end, it transforms into a horror film.”
Unicorn Wars starts out feeling a bit like one of the most playful movies from an iconic animator, which find a naughty glee in letting drawn beings curse, fire weapons, or have intimate relations.
Then it turns into more akin to a bleaker film by that same director, including ever more explicit brutality and a tangible connection to the real suffering of war.
Ultimately, it becomes a full-on extreme drama carnage.
The terror that turns the film an ideal spooky-season watch kicks in much sooner than one might expect.
The Unicorn Wars is ideal for the most dedicated lovers of violence, for lovers of intense movies who want to see something they haven’t ever watched previously, and are able to withstand a story that offers absolutely no punches.
See it in a dimly lit space with no disturbances, and that ending will dig under your skin and take up residence there.
Availability: Accessible via digital rental or sale on various digital platforms.
