That Gruesome Cartoon Movie Ending That Stays With Audiences
Among every mature animated films I have personally viewed, nothing has stuck with me quite like the fear-filled ending of the explicitly bloody as well as overwhelingly transgressive film from 2022 The Unicorn Wars.
Back in the year 2015, this Spain-based filmmaker crafted a dark, melancholy and often savage universe that included several minor , desolate hints of hope.
Although The Unicorn Wars appears as it stemmed from a drive to advance the medium even more, the filmmaker explained that it was actually an effort to convey a universal, multicultural message regarding “the common origin of every conflict.”
That idea is communicated via a squad of vividly colored bears , openly based on a famous series of lovable figures.
Being raised in a community centered on aggression and the defense industry, numerous these animals are fixated on exterminating the mythical beasts, thanks to a holy book that tells them they used to be kings of the forest, before the horned beings drove them out.
Others haven’t fully bought into the indoctrination, , choose to sample narcotics and fornicate in the woods.
Unlike their cuddly equivalents, these colorful critters have visible genitals and clear libidos.
For a certain especially vicious, cynical bear, Bluey, the war against the unicorns becomes a road to control — and particularly to authority above his gentler, kinder brother the character Tubby.
Bluey is a bully and an apparent sociopath , and as fear takes over his squad and takes his teammates one by one, he grabs increasingly power on his own behalf, via progressively violent, harmful methods.
At the same time, the horned creatures are suffering their own nightmare, through an expanding, deadly beast in their forest.
“In the early stages, it feels like a comedy,” the filmmaker commented. “Yet it becomes a more serious and sorrowful film. And in the finale, it transforms into a horror film.”
The Unicorn Wars commences feeling a bit like one of the more playful features by a legendary animator, that discover a mischievous joy in permitting drawn beings curse, shoot each other, or have intimate relations.
Subsequently it turns into something more like a more grim work from that director, with increasingly explicit brutality , a noticeable relation to the real tragedy of conflict.
Ultimately, it becomes a full-on theatrical horror bloodbath.
The terror that turns the film an ideal spooky-season movie starts a lot earlier than indicated.
Unicorn Wars is ideal for the most dedicated gorehounds, for fans of extreme cinema who desire to see a movie they’ve never seen on-screen before, and who can handle a plot that pulls absolutely no punches.
View it in a dark room without any distractions, and that ending will dig into your mind and stay with you.
Availability: Accessible via streaming or buying on multiple online services.