Unicorn Wars takes ‘adults-only animation’ to the absolute limit

This review of Unicorn Wars was originally published in conjunction with the film’s screening at Fantastic Fest 2022. It has been updated and republished for the film’s theatrical and digital release.

Perhaps every generation needs its own devastating animated film about the horrors of war. That’s one way to explain it Unicorn Wars2022’s gory, humiliating answer to movies like When the wind blows or that of Ralph Bakshi wizards. The latest from Spanish writer-director Alberto Vázquez is borderline and aggressive to a degree that’s hard to fathom: it weapons adorable cartoon creatures against its audience, introducing innocence and beauty to break it apart on screen in the most graphic and gruesome of ways. cracks. possible. The film is not an easy viewing, but it is a bold and memorable one.

Vázquez’ follow-up to 2015’s Birdboy: The Forgotten Children explains a long-standing feud between unicorns and teddy bears. That sounds like a story that would come from a macabre child smashing his stuffed animals together, but Vázquez’s version of the story is hyperbolically aimed at adults. The bears – pastel-colored, soft-looking creatures with huge heads and eyes and high-pitched, squeaky voices – are petty, cruel and doctrinal about their prejudices. Their hatred of unicorns stems from an overtly biblical sacred text that tells them that bears once lived joyfully in a sacred grove, until they “found God’s house” (a literal house in the forest) and rose above all other animals.

Then, the book says, unicorns became jealous of the bears’ grace and started a war that drove them out of the forest. Now the descendants of the bears live in an eternal military state, endlessly training new recruits and planning the next offensive in the forest. Which leads to the central action, where two sibling bears, Tubby and Bluey, are part of a team that embarks on a grim journey through the woods in search of a stray scout party.

From the start, Vázquez emphasizes how unfit the bears are for war – they are frightened, gentle creatures who would rather cuddle and pet each other (or themselves) than carry guns and grenades. Their training camp is called Camp Love; the motto is “Honor, Pain, Hugs.” They are trained in archery with cute little cupid bows that shoot heart-shaped arrows. They resemble puffy Care Bears more than the grizzly-like ancestors seen in the art of their sacred book.

But they are also absolute jerks who take every opportunity to hurt and abuse each other, with Bluey as the leader who lets his brother Tubby humiliate him over and over again. Not only is Bluey mean, he’s downright sadistic. The story begins as an eccentric “cute critters do unadorable things” story: Vázquez emphatically tweaks the audience with a close-up of a teddy bear’s tiny genitals as he dries off after a shower. Later, another bear pissing in the woods accuses Tubby of staring at his poop and then tries to turn the moment into a sexual encounter. But as the story expands and deepens beyond the initial small, mischievous provocations, the Bluey-Tubby conflict continues to open into something darker, uglier and older, stretching back even before their birth.

Vázquez has a knack for writing characters that tear the hearts of his audience. He draws here with extremely broad strokes, with the unicorns symbolizing the natural world, and the bears as a bitterly drawn portrait of the military-industrial complex and the way it indoctrinates and cynically consumes victims for reasons unrelated to the wars to have. it claims to fight. Capital-G Good and Capital-E Evil stretch throughout the film and it’s never hard to tell them apart.

But even within that black and white ethos, it’s possible to feel a little sympathy for some of the characters who perpetuate the worst of horrors, because they’re clearly born into a system where they’ve never had a chance to walk away unscathed. Their leadership is too controlling, their culture is too overtly built on the continuation of war. There’s a real pathos to the way Vázquez shapes this world to amplify all of Bluey’s worst tendencies, crush all of Tubby’s best, and bring them both into inescapable conflict. The unicorns are much less nuanced and detailed, but they are similarly carried away by a system that crushes innocence and consumes the unwary.

That all said, Unicorn Wars heads in areas so ugly and relentlessly grotesque that it probably tests the stamina of all but the most cult movie-loving gorehounds. An audience hungry for more animated films along the lines of Heavy metal or The backbone of the night could be all on board for the spectacle of Care Bears traumatized by an endless series of explicit murders, suicides, viscera and mutilations, right up to an impressively detailed shot of a rotting teddy bear with maggots writhing in an empty eye socket. It’s a lot to digest, but aside from the cute animal element, it’s a familiar brand of graphic grindhouse horror.

But Vázquez’s total dedication to building and burning down beautiful environments, or setting up and taking apart vulnerable characters, becomes riveting over the course of the film. There is no catharsis or promise of relief anywhere in the film. Every ounce of hope or light is ruthlessly extinguished as the film drags to a stunningly ferocious conclusion.

The deep hopelessness of Unicorn Wars has a purpose: it is a brutal, misanthropic view of war and the ruthless political forces behind it, especially the people who see conflict as a means of perpetuating control. Like Vázquez’ equally metaphorical, equally stark Bird boy, Unicorn Wars feels anger-driven and sad at the same time, a cri de coeur against fascism, militarism, authoritarianism and religion, especially the kind of religion used as a tool to make the rest possible.

But Bird boy offered at least a hint of possibility of escape or hope, and Unicorn Wars doesn’t have one. It feels like an expression of desperation and nihilism, a shocking slap in the face wrapped in a colorful candy-coated shell. Public that is mistaken Unicorn Wars for a potentially playful foul, a Fritz the catstyle strike against the “cartoons are for kids” mentality, should brace yourself for something that hits even harder and much more accurately. Unicorn Wars is about the devastation that war brings, and Vázquez damn sure makes it a pretty devastating experience.

Unicorn Wars now playing in select theaters — see the film’s website for details – and is available for rental on Amazon, Vuduand other digital platforms.