Rating: NR | Runtime: 92 minutes
Release Date: October 22nd, 2022 (Spain) / March 10th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Barton Films / GKIDS
Director(s): Alberto Vázquez
Writer(s): Alberto Vázquez

Here cuddles are made of steel, blood, and pain!

Nobody talks about the Unicorn Wars anymore. That ancient time when the Teddy Bears sought to reclaim their position beside God within the Magical Forest after being exiled by the Unicorns. They’ve licked their wounds since, pushing aside their innate desire for cuddly hearts and hugs to train for a gruesome battle steeped in revenge. Except, of course, that it’s been too long since the Bears inhabited that forest.

They no longer know what dangers it contains or what it is they hope to recover. Life is only pain now. It’s bad porridge while the generals eat blueberries in their ivory towers and plan which grunts will be this week’s collateral damage. Because what do those in power need that they don’t already have? Nothing. Nothing but a status quo built upon Biblical tales of demonic horned beasts inspiring more soldiers to die willingly.

Alberto Vázquez’s film is a wild mix of Apocalypse Now and Bambi like the logline states, but it’s also got a liberal dash of the Book of Genesis to keep things as melodramatically full of fire and brimstone as possible. We watch the Teddy Bears reconcile their nature (undying love and pleasure) with the mission beaten into their brains by religion and patriotism—two entities that care little about their believers outside of their usefulness to the cause.

We witness the serenity of the unicorns frolicking within the forest, never once thinking of the Bears at all. And we wonder about the Simians biding time, playing tricks, and potentially looking to hijack the prophecy that states how whoever drinks the blood of the last unicorn becomes “beautiful and eternal.”

Bluey (Jon Goiri) craves that power. He’s yearned to be superior ever since his twin brother Tubby (Jaione Insausti) exited the womb first. These siblings become a sort of Cain and Abel vying for the affection of Mom, God, and the military even if one of them doesn’t realize he’s ever been part of a competition. The result is betrayal. Subterfuge. Insanity.

Assisted by hallucinogenic glow worms (that’s not even the craziest scene of the whole) and a literal thirst for blood, Vázquez turns his candy-colored Care Bears into the foot soldiers of a phantasmagoric anti-war hellscape full of urine, intestines, and an eviscerated face only a mother could love (if she were still alive to try). It’s about a Holy War born out of jealousy and bolstered by greed. It’s about the trauma of surviving and the rage of the underappreciated that sustains the carnage.

It’s also an unforgettable R-rated animated experience that takes no prisoners as it metaphorically tells mankind’s own mythological tales under the guise of cutesy characters to truly get to the heart of how absurd our generations of hostility and bloodshed have always been. Things might get too weird at times, but that’s part of its charm.

We need that levity and confoundingly imaginative chaos to accept the darkness at its back—especially considering the personal revelations about to be exposed where Bluey and Tubby’s own lives are concerned. It’s doesn’t therefore take much to spark a genocide. It never has. And the scariest thing about such events remains the perpetual hordes of indoctrinated cannon fodder who blindly champion that hate without ever questioning why. Who would think to do so when it’s God telling them to fight? Faith always demands ignorance.

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A scene from UNICORN WARS; courtesy of GKIDS.