Unicorn Wars review: A cartoon anti-war epic that goes beyond horror 

This review was published in conjunction with the movie’s showing at the 2022 Fantastic Fest. For more information, see below.

Perhaps every generation deserves its horrifying animated film about war. That’s one way to explain Unicorn Wars, 2022’s gory, gutting answer to films like When the Wind Whistles or Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards. The latest from Spanish writer-director Alberto Vázquez is transgressive and aggressive to a degree that’s hard to fathom: It weaponizes cute cartoon creatures against its audience, and introduces innocence and beauty in order to tear it apart on screen in the most horrific ways possible. The film isn’t an easy watch, but it is a bold and memorable one.

Vázquez’s follow-up to 2015’s Birdboy: Forgotten Children Vazquez outlines a long-standing rivalry between unicorns, teddy bears. That sounds like a narrative that would emerge from a macabre kid bashing their stuffed animals into each other, but Vázquez’s version of the story is hyperbolically adult-oriented. The bears — pastel-colored, soft-looking critters with huge heads and eyes and high, squeaky voices — are petty, cruel, and doctrinaire about their prejudices. Their hatred for unicorns stems from an openly Bible-like holy text that tells them bears once lived joyously in a sacred forest, until they “found God’s house” (a literal house in the woods) and ascended 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 bears’ descendants live in a perpetual military state, endlessly training fresh recruits and planning the next offensive into the forest. The central action is where Tubby, a brother bear, and Bluey are part of a team that makes a dangerous trek through the forest looking for the lost scouting groups.

GKIDS image

From the start, Vázquez emphasizes how unsuited the bears are for war — they’re fearful, soft creatures who’d rather be hugging and petting each other (or themselves) than carrying rifles and grenades. Their training camp is called Camp Love; its motto is “Honor, Pain, Cuddles.” They’re trained in archery with adorable little Cupid bows that shoot heart-tipped arrows. These Care Bears look more like ballooned Care Bears, than the gritty-esque ancestors they see in their sacred art.

But they’re also absolute bastards who take every opportunity to hurt and abuse each other, with Bluey as the ringleader who sets up his brother Tubby for humiliation at every turn. Bluey isn’t just mean, he’s outright sadistic. The story starts out as just an oddball “adorable critters do unadorable things” narrative: Vázquez pointedly tweaks the audience with a close-up of one teddy’s diminutive genitals as he dries off post-shower. Later, another bear who’s pissing in the forest accuses Tubby of staring at his junk, then tries to turn the moment into a sexual encounter. As the story progresses, it becomes more complex and deeper than its first, minor provocations. The Bluey-Tubby dispute opens up to something darker and uglier. It stretches back as far as their childhood.

Vázquez has a talent for scripting characters who tear at his audience’s heartstrings. He’s drawing in extremely broad strokes here, 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 that have nothing to do with the wars it claims it’s fighting. 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 perpetuating the worst horrors, because they were clearly born into a system where they never had a chance to walk away undamaged. Their control is excessive and their culture is built too heavily on the perpetuation of war. There’s a real pathos in the way Vázquez shapes this world to empower all of Bluey’s worst tendencies, to crush all of Tubby’s best ones, and to set both of them up in an inescapable conflict. While the unicorns’ drawings are less detailed and nuanced, their actions are influenced by a system that consumes innocents and crushes them.

All said and done. Unicorn Wars heads into areas so ugly and unsparingly grotesque that it’s likely to challenge the stamina of all but the most cult-movie-loving gorehounds. The audience is hungry for animated films similar to Heavy Metal Or the most recent follower The Spine of NightIt’s possible that you are completely onboard for the sight of Care Bears being traumatized through a seemingly endless series of graphic murders. Suicides. Eviscerations. Mutilations. Even an incredible shot of a rotting Teddy Bear with maggots in his one-eye socket. It’s a lot to stomach, but apart from the cute-animal element, it’s a familiar kind of graphic grindhouse horror.

But Vázquez’s utter dedication to building beautiful environments and burning them down, or setting up vulnerable characters and ripping them apart, gets enervating over the course of the film. There’s no catharsis or promise of relief anywhere in the movie. As the film reaches its shockingly brutal conclusion, every ounce of hope and light are ruthlessly sucked out.

A profound sense of hopelessness. Unicorn Wars has purpose: It’s a vicious, misanthropic look at war and the unsparing political forces behind it, particularly the people who see conflict as a means of perpetuating control. Like Vázquez’s similarly metaphorical, similarly grim Birdboy, Unicorn Wars Feels angry-driven, sad, and a cri de coeur contre fascism and militarism.

However Birdboy Somehow, this offered some hope and a hint at escape. Unicorn WarsThere is none. The result is a statement about despair and nihilism that feels like a candy-coated wrapper. It is easy to make a mistake. Unicorn Wars A playful way to indulge in a sexual act is to use a Fritz the Cat-style strike against the “cartoons are for kids” mentality, should go in braced for something that hits even harder, and a lot more accurately. Unicorn Wars is about the devastation war brings, and Vázquez makes damn sure it’s an appropriately devastating experience.

Unicorn Wars Spain opens Oct. 21, GKIDS was acquired Unicorn Wars American Release in 2023