That Grisly Cartoon Movie Ending That Stays With Audiences
Out of every mature animated films I have ever viewed, no other has remained with me as much as the dread-soaked ending of a viscerally violent as well as deeply subversive film from 2022 Unicorn Wars.
In 2015’s, the Spanish writer-director crafted a dark, bleak and frequently brutal world with some tiny , desolate twinges of hope.
Although The Unicorn Wars seems like it stemmed from an impulse to advance animation further, the director explained that it was rather an attempt to express a universal, multicultural message concerning “the common origin of each battle.”
That message is conveyed by means of a squad of vividly colored bears , clearly inspired by a famous series of lovable figures.
Maturing in a society built around militarism and the military-industrial complex, numerous the bears are fixated on exterminating unicorns, due to a religious scripture that tells the bears they previously were masters of the woods, before these creatures forced them out.
Others haven’t fully bought into the indoctrination, and choose to try out substances and engage sexually in the woods.
In contrast to their cuddly counterparts, these colorful critters have visible sexual organs , obvious urges.
For one particularly cruel, skeptical animal, Bluey, the war with unicorns transforms into a path to power — and specifically to dominance over his gentler, kinder brother the character Tubby.
This bear behaves aggressively , an apparent antisocial figure , and when fear overcomes his squad and claims his fellow soldiers sequentially, he seizes progressively control on his own behalf, in increasingly bloody, harmful methods.
Simultaneously, the horned creatures are experiencing their own nightmare, as an expanding, harmful creature in their forest.
“Initially, it seems like a comedy,” the filmmaker said. “Yet it turns into a more dramatic and sorrowful movie. And in the finale, it transforms into a horror film.”
Unicorn Wars begins feeling a bit like one of the most playful films from a legendary animator, which find a wicked pleasure in permitting cartoon characters swear, fire weapons, or sex each other up.
Afterward it becomes closer to a bleaker work by that same artist, featuring progressively explicit brutality , a palpable relation to genuine suffering of conflict.
By the end, it is a full-on extreme drama bloodbath.
The fear which makes the film a Halloween-friendly viewing starts much sooner than one might expect.
The Unicorn Wars is one for the hardcore lovers of violence, for enthusiasts of extreme cinema who wish to watch a film they’ve never watched previously, and are able to withstand a plot that pulls unflinching brutality.
View it in a dimly lit space free from interruptions, and the finale will dig deep within you and linger.
Availability: Available for rental or purchase on several streaming sites.
