There is still a belief that if a film is animated, it’s for children. That’s why movie theaters have to include very large signs warning people that the Demon Slayer movies are not for kids.
This has been an issue for decades. The worst example in history is not Sausage Party, but a British film from 1978 featuring talking rabbits. It was so impactful that this is enough of a description for an entire generation of readers to start nodding their heads and clicking away, because they know what’s coming next.
Watership Down is both a fantastic film and one of the most traumatic and disturbing pieces of animation in history. It’s so traumatic that nearly 30 years after its release, the British government changed its official rating.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Watership Down was full of rabbit on rabbit violence since it is an adaptation of a 1972 novel by Richard Adams. That didn’t stop unsuspecting parents from taking young kids to the theater, or setting them down in front of the VHS player, to watch as rabbits snatched up by birds of prey, engaging in brutal paw to paw combat, and exploring a society that venerates death.
If any of that sounds dark and a little disturbing for a children’s film, that’s because it is. It’s also what makes the book and film classics.
Watership Down doesn’t take place in a fantasy world like the Redwall novels; instead, these are real rabbits, living on farms in England. They do everything a real rabbit does, with the exception of talking.
The story follows Fiver and his brother Hazel as they lead a small group of renegades from their warren in search of a new home, the hillside known as Watership Down. Along the way, they come across a warren of rabbits who accept that they are being “farmed” by humans and death is the price they pay for living in safety.
In another warren, rabbits live under the totalitarian rule of the despotic General Woundwort. The allegory at the heart of the story should be coming clear right now, and it’s as heavy as the dark imagery playing out on screen.
Unlike Disney movies of the era, Watership Down is filled with philosophical debates over how society should be governed and the individual’s place in society. It even explores how we treat death.
For the rabbits, death is a way of life, and while there’s plenty of brutal killings on-screen (63 in total), it also shows death as the natural end of all living things and not something to be feared, but embraced. The violence is intense and shocking, but always has meaning behind it and doesn’t exist simply for shock value.
That’s why, despite the simplicity of the surface-level plot, rabbits trying to find a new home for themselves, Watership Down has been hailed as a masterpiece for generations. A traumatic classic that haunts children whenever they watch it, but it is a classic.
Rated PG in the United States, it was originally rated U (the equivalent of G, for General Audiences or “all ages”) in its home country of England. It was upgraded to PG in 2022. For those who watched it when we were five or six, it still feels like an R is more appropriate.
I first watched Watership Down in middle school after having read every one of Brian Jacques Redwall novels, thinking it would be similar. I thought one of the deaths in Martin the Warrior was shocking, so I wasn’t prepared for Violet to be snatched into the air by a hawk.
By the time Woundwort is covered in his own blood, screaming as he goes to a warrior’s death in battle, the damage was done, and I had seen things that I could not forget. It’s that kind of lasting impact that makes Watership Down a classic.
Watership Down isn’t afraid to tell a dark story about totalitarian governments, death as a natural part of life, free will, individual rights, or even how, sometimes, people will be willing to pay a steep price for safety and comfort. No children’s movie today will tackle these topics the way that an animated film about rabbits does, which is why, despite the blood and guts, it’s well worth your time today.
Be warned, if you thought the beginning of Up was heavy emotional manipulation, have some tissues on hand when you see the fate of Fiver. It’s haunting, beautiful, it’ll send you into a deep period of self-reflection. That’s the magic of movies and it’s the magic of Watership Down.
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