The Gruesome Cartoon Film Ending That Haunts Audiences
Among all the adult-oriented animated films I have ever watched, no other has stuck with me as much as the terror-laced finale of a graphically gory and overwhelingly transgressive 2022 movie The Unicorn Wars.
In the year 2015, the Spanish writer-director created a grim, melancholy , frequently brutal world with some tiny , forlorn glimmers of hope.
While The Unicorn Wars appears as it originated from an impulse to advance the medium further, the filmmaker explained that it was actually an effort to express a universal, multicultural message about “the common origin of each battle.”
That message is expressed via a group of brightly hued teddy bears , openly modeled after a popular line of cuddly characters.
Maturing in a culture focused on warmongering and the war machine, numerous the bears are consumed by exterminating the mythical beasts, due to a religious scripture that claims the bears they were once rulers of the woods, until these creatures drove them out.
Some haven’t fully accepted the indoctrination, and choose to experiment with drugs or engage sexually in the woods.
Unlike their friendly counterparts, these vivid animals have visible sexual organs and obvious libidos.
For a certain notably brutal, skeptical animal, Bluey, the war with unicorns transforms into a road toward dominance — and particularly to dominance above his gentler, nicer brother the character Tubby.
Bluey is a bully and a seeming sociopath , and when fear takes over his squad and claims his fellow soldiers sequentially, he seizes progressively influence personally, through ever more bloody, damaging approaches.
At the same time, these mythical beings are enduring their own nightmare, in the form of an expanding, destructive monster in their woods.
“In the early stages, it feels like a comedy,” the filmmaker said. “But then it turns into a more dramatic and sad movie. And ultimately, it becomes a terrifying movie.”
Unicorn Wars begins feeling a bit like one of the more whimsical films by an iconic animator, that discover a naughty glee in permitting drawn beings swear, shoot each other, or engage sexually.
Afterward it evolves into closer to a bleaker work from the same creator, with increasingly graphic violence , a noticeable link to the actual tragedy of conflict.
By the end, it becomes an outright theatrical horror bloodbath.
The terror which makes this a perfect Halloween viewing starts much sooner than one might expect.
Unicorn Wars is one for the hardcore gorehounds, for enthusiasts of extreme cinema who desire to see a movie they haven’t ever seen on-screen before, and are able to withstand a plot which delivers no restraint.
View it in a dimly lit space free from interruptions, and the finale will dig under your skin and linger.
How to view: Accessible via rental or purchase on multiple digital platforms.
