Cocaine Bear Could Spark An Addiction

In 1985, there was a true account of a plane crash that left a ton of cocaine floundering out in the wilderness until a lowly black bear – known to many as Pablo Escobear – came along and swallowed it up. That story ended quite sadly since Pablo Escobear overdosed after going on that binge, but who wants to watch that depressing movie? Definitely not screenwriter Jimmy Warden nor director Elizabeth Banks, and surely not THIS guy! Not when you have the potential to infuse a devilishly macabre animal-slasher-horror-comedy into the cinemasphere! Cocaine Bear is way too high on her own supply to sit around moping when she could be mauling hikers enroute to her next fix.

We open in 1985 and Andrew Thornton (an unrecognizable Matthew Rhys) is kicking kilos of cocaine out of his plane as he heads for an inevitable crash. The idea being that this way, at least they can recover the coke and salvage the operation after the fact. Well, things simply do not go as planned, and the next thing we know there are tons of cocaine packages wasting away in a vast Georgia forest. Drug runners Eddie and Daveed (Alden Ehrenreich and O’Shea Jackson Jr.) – led by Ray Liotta’s delightfully savage Syd in the actor’s final performance – hit the woods in search of the drugs. Unbeknownst to everyone, a mischievous black bear has found the stash… and she’s ready to party while dancing in the blood of innocents.

Adding to our sampler platter of victims is Sari (Keri Russell), a mother on the hunt for her truant daughter and friend who skipped school for a wilderness adventure; Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a cop searching for the cocaine with a desperate need for animal companionship; and Ranger Liz (hilarious scene-stealer Margo Martindale), a ranger with her sights set more on love than saving the town from a coked-out raging fur-beast.

There are numerous other colorful characters in the film, but let’s be honest: you just want to know if the bear kills it. Yes, hell yes. Every scene with that hairy buzzsaw is sheer joy, and the WETA team has once again delivered a special effect that rivals anything Disney’s big money powerhouse is showcasing. Even though the audience knows full-well that this is not a real bear doing bumps in the woods, there were still plenty of audible “awwwwwws” and “don’t hurt the bear!” in my showing. This bear is maiming and dismembering civilians on the regular, and yet we routinely side with the CGI mammal throughout the film’s runtime. Let’s face it, deep down, everyone knows that people suck and probably deserve a bear attack or two within our lifetimes.

From the onset, Elizabeth Banks establishes the “jokes-meets-Jaws” tone for Cocaine Bear, and it works fairly seamlessly. The backdrop and the score (by Mark Mothersbaugh) emulate 80s cheese with the subtlety of a mallet to the eye, hammering home that we should stop taking this film too seriously immediately. Though the characters might feel a bit forced or over-the-top at times, and it takes a while to really crank up the nose candy antics, once Banks amps up the carnage, this is speedball horror at its finest. Severed limbs and gore aplenty are in abundance as our adorable crackhead continues on her nonstop mission of destruction to chase that high.

It takes confidence for a director to pull off this ridiculous story, keep us entertained throughout, and still leave us rooting for the bear who just decimated a small town. It looks like Banks believes in every insane set-piece she has built and has found her groove as a filmmaker. One extended scene that revolves around an EMT unit arriving to assist Ranger Liz – only to attempt a frenzied escape from Pablo Escobear – is one of the most fun scenes in a horror film in eons. Ingenious. The film needed a couple more scenes matching this intensity and audaciousness to reach peak CULT CLASSIC status, but it is an engaging romp, nonetheless.

We have seen plenty of films attempt this tone before, and unlike Snakes on a Plane (which ended up being a cool idea and line, but little else), Cocaine Bear is exactly as ridiculous as its title implies, and just as entertaining. If this film is successful, I’m behind Jacked Jackals or whatever else Banks and her friends come up with. It’s time to coke-up the animal kingdom, because we as a species deserve this.

Listen to Aaron’s full review of Cocaine Bear on this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: