Unicorn Wars drags adorable animated critters through unfathomable horrors

polygon.com:

This review was published in conjunction with the movie’s showing at the 2022 Fantastic Fest. See below for release information.

Maybe every generation needs its own devastating animated movie about the horrors of war. That’s one way to explain Unicorn Wars, 2022’s gory, gutting answer to films like When the Wind Blows 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: The Forgotten Children lays out a long-standing feud between unicorns and 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. Which leads to the central action, where two brother bears, Tubby and Bluey, form