The horrific ending of Unicorn Wars as explained by director Alberto Vázquez

Watch trailers or view images of Alberto Vázquez’ shockingly gruesome animated fable unicorn warsviewers may find themselves absently humming a long-forgotten tune: the theme to whatever Care Bears TV show they grew up with it. Any resemblance between the murderous, fanatical bears of unicorn wars and their kid-friendly counterparts, Vázquez tells Polygon, are quite deliberate.

“It was a series I really liked when I was little, Care Bears‘, the Spanish writer and director graphic novelist says, speaks partly through an interpreter. “I like to play with animal iconography. Anthropomorphic animals do not belong to any particular culture or time period. They somehow belong to everyone. They are part of every childhood.”

It’s a guarantee that no one has ever had Care Bears in their childhood like the ones in unicorn wars. While Vázquez’s characters have the round, cute bodies, big eyes, and pastel colors of children’s series characters, they also have visible genitalia and notable sex drives, bad mouths, bad tempers, and in some cases, a deep-seated psychosis. Their war-oriented culture means many of the characters are graphically mutilated and murdered throughout the story, and the film ends with a deeply shocking sequence that seems designed to challenge the audience’s stamina.

[Ed. note: This interview features end spoilers for Unicorn Wars.]

But none of this is meant solely as an edgelord provocation or transgression. By crafting a horrifying metaphor about the causes of war, Vázquez wanted to draw on universal imagery to ensure viewers around the world would view the film the same way, without any specific nationalistic intent or a particular country’s history to see.

“They’re iconic — and not just the icons of the Care Bears,” he says. Just like his previous animated film, Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, he wanted to use cartoon animals because every country has their own versions of this idea. “I like to work with recognizable iconography. In bird boy, it was mice and rabbits. So when you watch this film you can’t really tell where it’s from – you can’t tell if it’s Spanish, American, Japanese or French.”

The symbolism in unicorn wars is similarly broad and straightforward: the culture of bears is built around a military-industrial complex focused on demonizing unicorns and waging an endless war against them. The bears have a sacred book that tells them their ancestors lived in the sacred forest, close to God, but the unicorns wrongly drove them away. As the film progresses, he focuses on two brother bears, Tubby and Bluey, who represent opposite sides in the war of attrition against the unicorns – and fundamentally against nature and the environment.

Image: GKIDS

In the late stages of the film, Tubby and Bluey have both become radicalized. Bluey leads a coup against the leaders of his own faction, assassinates them and takes control of the Bear Army. Tubby goes back to nature, lives peacefully with the unicorns and immerses himself in the forest far from civilization. But Bluey, determined to prove his superiority, leads his army into the forest and burns it, slaughtering all the unicorns in a bloody battle, murdering Tubby and dying himself. A shapeless, devouring monster first seen in the film’s opening sequences , rises from the gutted corpses of unicorns and bears, and the collective demise of the ancient world takes a new form: what appears to be the first human.

For Vázquez, this story is about analyzing humanity’s darkest impulses and the institutions that fuel and control those impulses to maintain power. “It’s a war movie, and war is very dark and it’s about the worst of people,” he says. “I really wanted to talk about the common origin of all wars. So while it may seem like an imaginary sort of Vietnam War, to me all wars are the same.”

The element in the film that perhaps feels the least universal and hardest to understand is this shapeless, greedy, hungry monster in the forest. Vázquez explains, “The monster in the film functions as both a prologue and an epilogue. It serves as a metaphor for what comes later. The monster to me is a god without form, a god worshiped as a leader, but a god yet to evolve. When the end comes, the god takes form and the prophecy of the Book of Bears is fulfilled. It’s a magical, mysterious element that reinforces the concept [of what violence does to a society].”

But ultimately, the film is less about the monster and more about the message – specifically the rulers who profit from war and the tools they use to stay in power. “The bears have a very religious and militaristic culture that controls public opinion,” says Vázquez. “Whoever controls discourse and information controls war. The way they talk about bigotry – religion is a form of control. A war with ideology is much more dangerous than a war without it.”

Image: GKIDS

Where bird boy ends with at least a hint of hope, unicorn wars robs the characters and the world of any chance of hope or recovery. And it’s also infinitely cynical about what humanity is made of. That’s no coincidence either, says Vázquez. “The film plays with contrasts,” he says. “In the beginning it feels like a humorous film, but then it becomes a more dramatic and sad film. And in the end it’s a horror film. I like to provoke audiences, but I also like to provoke emotions – and something powerful and shocking provokes emotions.”

But here, too, he sees the end unicorn wars and its nihilistic message as realistic, not transgression for its own sake. “I want to be very radical with the message in my stories,” he explains. “I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. It’s a very warlike and violent film and I think the ending fits the theme. It might be uncomfortable for certain viewers, but I like it when an audience feels uncomfortable. I want them to feel moved. I like films that, even if they’re not perfect, leave a memory.”

unicorn wars now playing in select theaters — See the film’s website for details — and is available for rent Amazon, vuduand other digital platforms.