Unicorn Wars redefines “not for children” animation in gruesome, memorable ways

Of all the adult-targeted animated films I’ve ever watched, nothing has stuck with me like the dread-soaked ending of Alberto Vázquez’s graphically gory, overwhelmingly transgressive 2022 movie Unicorn Wars. In 2015’s Birdboy: The Forgotten Children, the Spanish writer-director created a dark, melancholy, often savage world with a few small, forlorn twinges of hope. While Unicorn Wars feels like it came from an impulse to push the medium further, the director told Polygon that it was more of an attempt to communicate a universal, cross-cultural message about “the common origin of all wars.”