The Gruesome Animated Movie Ending That Lingers Viewers
Among every adult-oriented animated films I’ve personally viewed, no other has remained with me quite like the dread-soaked finale of the explicitly bloody and highly provocative film from 2022 The Unicorn Wars.
Back in the year 2015, the Spanish filmmaker created a dark, somber , frequently brutal world with a few small , desolate twinges of hope.
Although The Unicorn Wars seems like it originated from an impulse to advance animation further, the filmmaker explained that it was rather an effort to communicate a widespread, multicultural message regarding “the common origin of all wars.”
This theme is communicated by means of a group of vividly colored bears , openly modeled after a well-known series of lovable characters.
Growing up in a community centered on aggression and the war machine, numerous the bears are obsessed with killing the mythical beasts, thanks to a religious scripture that claims the bears they used to be masters of the forest, before the horned beings forced them out.
Others haven’t fully bought into the propaganda, and prefer to experiment with narcotics or fornicate in the forest.
Unlike their cuddly counterparts, these bright beings display sexual organs , definite sex drives.
For a certain particularly cruel, skeptical animal, the bear named Bluey, the war with the unicorns transforms into a path toward dominance — and specifically to authority over his gentler, kinder brother the bear Tubby.
Bluey is a bully and an apparent sociopath , and as fear takes over his squad and takes his fellow soldiers sequentially, he takes increasingly power personally, in increasingly bloody, damaging approaches.
Simultaneously, these mythical beings are enduring their own horror, in the form of a spreading, harmful creature in their habitat.
“In the early stages, it feels like a humorous movie,” the filmmaker said. “But then it becomes a more dramatic and sorrowful movie. And in the finale, it becomes a horror film.”
Unicorn Wars starts out feeling a bit like among the whimsical films by a renowned animator, that discover a naughty glee in allowing animated figures curse, fire weapons, or have intimate relations.
Afterward it evolves into something more like a more grim movie from the same director, including ever more explicit brutality and a palpable relation to genuine horror of conflict.
By the end, it’s an outright theatrical horror bloodbath.
The horror which makes the film a perfect Halloween viewing kicks in well before than one might expect.
The Unicorn Wars is one for the devoted lovers of violence, for lovers of intense movies who want to see a film they haven’t ever viewed until now, and are able to withstand a plot which delivers no restraint.
See it in a dimly lit space free from interruptions, and the conclusion will dig into your mind and linger.
Where to watch: Available for digital rental or sale on multiple streaming sites.
