The Gruesome Cartoon Movie Ending That Haunts Viewers
Among all the mature cartoon movies I have ever viewed, no other has stuck with me quite like the dread-soaked ending of a explicitly bloody and overwhelingly transgressive film from 2022 The Unicorn Wars.
Back in 2015’s, the Spain-based writer-director crafted a grim, melancholy and often savage world with several minor , desolate twinges of hope.
While Unicorn Wars feels like it originated from an impulse to push animation further, the filmmaker clarified that it was more an attempt to express a widespread, cross-cultural theme about “the shared root of each battle.”
That idea is communicated through a band of vividly colored bears , openly inspired by a popular line of cuddly figures.
Being raised in a culture built around warmongering and the war machine, many of the bears are consumed by slaughtering unicorns, because of a religious scripture which states the bears they were once masters of the woodland, until the horned beings expelled them.
Some did not entirely accepted the propaganda, and prefer to sample narcotics or fornicate outdoors.
In contrast to their friendly counterparts, these bright beings show sexual organs , definite sex drives.
For a certain notably brutal, cynical bear, the character Bluey, the battle with the unicorns becomes a route toward dominance — and particularly to authority over his softer, kinder brother the character Tubby.
Bluey behaves aggressively , a seeming sociopath , and while horror takes over his unit and kills his comrades one by one, he seizes more and more control personally, via progressively bloody, harmful methods.
At the same time, the horned creatures are enduring their own terror, in the form of a spreading, destructive monster in their forest.
“In the early stages, it feels like a lighthearted film,” the filmmaker said. “Yet it evolves into a more intense and sad movie. And by the end, it’s a terrifying movie.”
The Unicorn Wars starts out similar to one of the most whimsical movies from a legendary filmmaker, that discover a mischievous joy in allowing drawn beings curse, shoot each other, or have intimate relations.
Subsequently it evolves into closer to a more grim film from the same creator, including ever more graphic violence and a palpable link to the actual horror of battle.
In the finale, it becomes a complete extreme drama bloodbath.
The horror that makes this a Halloween-friendly movie kicks in well before than indicated.
The Unicorn Wars is suited for the most dedicated lovers of violence, for fans of intense movies who wish to watch a film they’ve never seen on-screen before, and are able to withstand a plot that offers unflinching brutality.
View it with the lights off with no disturbances, and the conclusion will crawl under your skin and stay with you.
Where to watch: Accessible via streaming or buying on multiple streaming sites.
