That Grisly Animated Movie Conclusion That Stays With Fans

Among every mature animated films I have ever viewed, nothing has remained with me quite like the dread-soaked conclusion of a viscerally violent and deeply subversive film from 2022 The Unicorn Wars.

Back in the year 2015, the Spanish writer-director crafted a grim, melancholy , often savage universe with a few small , desolate hints of optimism.

While Unicorn Wars feels like it came from an impulse to push the medium further, the filmmaker explained that it was rather a try to express a widespread, multicultural theme regarding “the shared root of each battle.”

That message is communicated via a squad of vividly colored bears , clearly modeled after a popular line of lovable figures.

Maturing in a culture built around warmongering as well as the military-industrial complex, many of the bears are fixated on exterminating the mythical beasts, thanks to a holy book that claims the bears they were once masters of the woods, until the horned beings expelled them.

Others haven’t fully fallen for the brainwashing, , would rather try out drugs and mate in the forest.

Unlike their cuddly equivalents, these vivid animals have visible genitals , definite sex drives.

For a certain especially vicious, cynical bear, the character Bluey, the conflict with the unicorns turns into a path toward dominance — and especially to supremacy above his softer, nicer brother Tubby.

The character acts as a tormentor and an obvious psychopath , and when terror overcomes his squad and takes his teammates sequentially, he takes more and more power for himself, in increasingly gory, destructive ways.

Meanwhile, the unicorns are suffering their own nightmare, in the form of an expanding, deadly beast in their habitat.

Unicorn Wars begins resembling one of the more quirky features by a legendary filmmaker, that discover a wicked pleasure in allowing drawn beings curse, fire weapons, or engage sexually.

Then it evolves into more akin to a bleaker work from that director, including ever more explicit brutality and a noticeable link to the real horror of war.

In the finale, it becomes a complete theatrical horror massacre.

The fear that makes the film an ideal spooky-season movie kicks in well before than that description suggests.

The Unicorn Wars is suited for the devoted lovers of violence, for fans of extreme cinema who wish to see a film they’ve never viewed until now, and can endure a plot that pulls no restraint.

View it in a dark room without any distractions, and the finale will burrow under your skin and linger.

How to view: Accessible via streaming or buying on various digital platforms.