The Gruesome Cartoon Movie Ending That Lingers Audiences
Among every mature cartoon movies I have ever watched, nothing has stuck with me quite like the dread-soaked conclusion of the explicitly bloody as well as overwhelingly transgressive 2022 movie The Unicorn Wars.
In 2015’s, the Spain-based filmmaker created a dark, somber , frequently brutal universe with a few small , forlorn hints of hope.
While The Unicorn Wars appears as it came from an impulse to advance animation further, the director clarified that it was more an effort to express a universal, multicultural theme about “the mutual source of all wars.”
That message is conveyed through a group of vividly colored bears , openly based on a popular series of lovable figures.
Growing up in a society centered on warmongering as well as the war machine, a lot of these animals are consumed by slaughtering the mythical beasts, because of a holy book that claims them they used to be masters of the forest, before the unicorns forced them out.
Others haven’t fully bought into the propaganda, , choose to sample substances and engage sexually outdoors.
Unlike their gentle counterparts, these vivid animals show sexual organs and obvious sex drives.
For a particular particularly cruel, skeptical animal, Bluey, the conflict against unicorns becomes a route to power — and particularly to supremacy over his softer, nicer brother Tubby.
The character is a bully and an obvious psychopath , and while fear takes over his unit and takes his fellow soldiers individually, he grabs increasingly power on his own behalf, via progressively violent, harmful methods.
At the same time, the horned creatures are enduring their own terror, as an expanding, deadly beast in their woods.
“At the beginning, it feels like a lighthearted film,” the director said. “Yet it becomes a more serious and sorrowful movie. And by the end, it’s a horror film.”
The Unicorn Wars commences feeling a bit like one of the more whimsical films from an iconic animator, that uncover a mischievous joy in letting animated figures swear, fire weapons, or have intimate relations.
Then it turns into something more like a more grim movie from the same director, including ever more visual gore and a noticeable relation to the real suffering of battle.
In the finale, it is a full-on Grand Guignol massacre.
The fear that makes the film a perfect Halloween movie starts a lot earlier than one might expect.
The Unicorn Wars is ideal for the most dedicated gorehounds, for enthusiasts of extreme cinema who want to see a movie they haven’t ever watched previously, and who can handle a narrative which delivers no restraint.
Watch it in a dark room without any distractions, and that ending will dig into your mind and stay with you.
How to view: Accessible via digital rental or sale on several streaming sites.
