Watership Down Review: Still Burrowing Into Your Nightmares

With commitment to the realities of the natural world, the passage of time has done little to water down Watership Down’s fierce power.

From E.B. White to Roald Dahl, the best children’s classics know to instill some measure of fear in their readers/viewers. Adams imparted his own concerns for animal welfare to his daughters via stories of uprooted and hunted rabbits in the hills near their Hampshire home, which eventually became his 1972 multi-million bestselling novel. The tale of the intrepid Hazel and his warren-ful of evicted bunnies was presented by Adams in a naturalistic style that gave it a sense of danger that most children’s literature simply didn’t possess. Rosen’s adaptation of Watership Down tries to retain that sense of realism, though it does inevitably lose some of its edge in translation from page to screen.

The film opens with an Insular art-inspired sequence detailing the myth of how the creator Frith had to create predators to stem the overpopulation of rabbits. The script is upfront about the poor bunny’s place at the bottom of the food chain. It’s only because of the fearlessness of the likes of Hazel (John Hurt), and the foresight of his timid brother Fiver (Richard Briers), that the rabbits continue to survive in the harsh natural world. In invoking this harshness, Rosen’s animation is a flagrantly independent product of the 1970s, with a look closer to Ralph Bakshi than Don Bluth.

Apart from the opening and closing sequences, Watership Down is a down and dirty film, coloured predominantly in browns and greys. When colour does appear, it either highlights the greens of the rabbits’ idyllic home, or the blood dripping from the jaws of their enemies. The sight of rival rabbit leader General Woundwort (Harry Andrews) with bloodied mandibles is prime nightmare fuel. It’s no coincidence that editor Terry Rawlings would cut this and Alien back to back, both searing themselves on the mind with quick but suggestive moments of violence.

The animation of Watership Down is fascinating, oscillating between breathtakingly detailed and strangely incomplete from scene to scene. As the rabbits’ home is threatened by human development, and Fiver urges his brethren to find a new home, the rabbits have to cross glade, road and enemy territory to have any chance of survival. At times, their leaps and appearance seem untethered from the laws of physics, their disjointed movements undermining the gritty realism Rosen is aiming for, and the voice work from an accomplished cast. Imperfect as it may be, the animation’s limitations lend the film a trippy feel, with the occasional jankiness feeding the perception that Watership Down will not pander to its audience. The film refuses to be used as a babysitter for a passive childish crowd.

Ironically, it’s the film’s leaps into the fantastical that retain the most power. When Fiver imagines the rabbits’ warren being destroyed, the land is awash in the blood-red hues of sunset, while trees and overhead power cables become skeletal hands that reach down from on high. The famed ‘Bright Eyes’ sequence, accompanied by Art Garfunkel’s performance of Mike Batt’s beautiful ballad, remains a tearjerker. Moments like this, in tandem with its scenes of shocking natural violence, ensure that Watership Down remains unshakeable. It may lack the polish of comparable contemporaries, but it remains a powerful primer on the necessary cruelty of the natural world. It could be the ideal way to terrify the little’uns this Halloween.

The new 4K restoration of Watership Down will have its World Premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 12-15, 2024 and be released in UK and Irish cinemas on October 25, 2024 and on Blu-Ray on November 25.