With “Cocaine Bear” you’re either in for the ride, or you aren’t. Going in to Elizabeth Banks’ horror comedy, I knew exactly what I was getting, so I had a blast with it, suffice it to say. Everyone in the film seems to know what kind of movie they’re in as it wears everything about itself on its sleeve. It’s a movie about a rampaging black bear on a coke trip. What more are you expecting?
Based on real events, “Cocaine Bear” is set in the 1980’s where a massive shipment of cocaine is accidentally dropped in a forest in Chattahoochee. After a massive 500 pound black bear consumes the giant shipment of cocaine, it becomes a rabid, murderous coke fiend, slaughtering random hikers and passersby. Now it’s up to a single mom, a lone cop, and a group of gangsters on the hunt for the shipment, to find the black bear and put a stop to its murder spree.
“Cocaine Bear” is a ridiculous movie, but it’s so much fun because it’s ridiculous. It takes the actual real life events and builds on it to form a viciously gory and mean horror comedy surrounding a group of hapless individuals. The movie even begins quoting Wikipedia of all things; it’s a hilarious tongue in cheek jab at common Nature Run Amok films that like to preface their films with dramatic quotes or facts. The fact lends credibility to the black bear suddenly becoming violent, and has a great time building on the silly, extraordinary events. The bear isn’t anything more than a rampaging drug addict that literally does anything to have its fix.
Director Banks fills the screen with a plethora of interesting actors including Keri Russell, O’ Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Alden Ehrenreich, respectively. While the movie is evenly a horror comedy, it never shies away from the horror element, driving the narrative on the odd events involving the cocaine riddled bear. There are a slew of gruesome and memorable scenes including dismemberment, a vicious mauling in a tree; there is tons of blood, guts, and even severed heads. One of the best sequences involves a chase with the bear and a pair of EMT’s fleeing in their truck. Banks’ film feels so out of left field with the kinds of films she usually directs, but she handles the movie like a pro.
It almost feels as if she’s channeling Alexandre Aja a la “Piranha 3D,” a lot of the time. If anything, the movie does drag on in the finale, and there are long stretches with too much build up and not enough of the Cocaine Bear slaughtering victims. Nevertheless, I’m glad that there’s a movie like “Cocaine Bear” out there for sheer novelty for movie going audiences. It’s a movie best watched with a crowd, as it’s packed with great one-liners, some mean, gnarly rampaging scenes, and fun performances from the cast. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more of these terror sprees for the Cocaine Bear planned down the line. Maybe we can get “Meth Moose”?