Cocaine Bear
If you have ever wondered what would happen if a Black Bear ingested a duffle bag of cocaine, Elizabeth Bank’s 2023 movie Cocaine Bear follows that exact promise. The movie opens in 1985, following real-life drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton as he attempts to parachute off his plane after dropping several shipments of cocaine above a forest. Thornton jumps out the plane only to hilariously (and tragically) fall to his death after his parachute malfunctions. Afterwards, a black bear consumes some of the cocaine and gets extremely aggressive. The bear then attacks two newlyweds hiking, killing one of them.
What makes Cocaine Bear an enticing movie to check out is its ‘based on true events’ angle. The movie is loosely based on events that occurred in Georgia in the same year. As mentioned earlier, Andrew Thornton is a real convicted smuggler that really did jump to his unintentional death while trying to transport some cocaine. A bear found the cocaine and ingested it but tragically died of an overdose. The biggest creative liberty the movie takes is extending the bear’s life to have the bear kill and maul several victims throughout the 95-minute runtime.
The movie follows several groups of characters, the primary two include, two preteens, Dee Dee (played by Brooklyn Prince) and Henry (Christian Convery), as they flee into the forest and get ambushed by the aforementioned cocaine bear, and Dee Dee’s mother, Sari (played by Keri Russell) who is on the search for her daughter. The other group includes fixer Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) who works for drug kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta) and Syd’s son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) who are sent to retrieve the remaining cocaine.
The movie tries to flesh out the bewildering concept of a bear under the influence of a schedule II drug by adding themes of family embedded into the story. Sari is a newly single mother who works excessively as a nurse. Her daughter Dee Dee only flees to the forest to begin with in an attempt of getting her mother’s attention. The movie does a mediocre way of addressing this by having Dee Dee openly admit it in an annoyingly self-aware kind of way. The movie later does something similar with the bear. More on that later.
The movie introduces more characters like a group of three teenage delinquents that randomly attack park/forest visitors. There is a park ranger that is hilariously in love with her colleague who seems to be oblivious to the whole thing. Really all they do is exist to increase the kill count which I didn’t mind. At its core, this movie has a comedic element to it, most likely due to its outlandish premise. There were no real-life killings, in real life the bear just died of an overdose and that is a situation where admittedly reality is a bit more boring than art. The movie aims to entertain its audience. The movie does a good job balancing the more dramatic sentimental parts of the movie with the more lighthearted humorous elements. With a concept as zany as a cocaine bear, a lot of the characters have hyperbolic reactions to the bear. These fight or flight moments have entertaining moments and honestly as chaotic as the transgression of events feel, nothing feels overly unrealistic. The movie does a good job of establishing the world it takes place in and the setting of the national park. All the characters including the primary ones have organic reasons for getting involved in the whole ordeal. It kind of leans into this wrong place, wrong time element that feels very Texas Chainsaw but also manages to maintain this cynical lethalness to the bear and the situation at hand I’m looking at you ‘park ranger death scene’. But the cluelessness of the characters prior to their encounter with the bear have a lot of funny moments which I think kind of grounds the movie.
Sad enough to admit, the kills are something worth mentioning. Going into this, I knew there were going to be disposable characters that I was not meant to care about and to be quite honest that much is true. I really couldn’t remember most of the characters and in some way, I’m not meant to. The movie drew audiences that were also interested in the kills. I mean its rated R and it’s about a wild grizzly bear that goes on a savage rampage after consuming a large quantity of cocaine. There were some memorable kills, like a scalping? On the highway. A man gets disemboweled at some point. Someone loses some fingers. That is what physically resonated with me and honestly impressed me with how good it looked on screen. It has a shoddy plot with mediocre writing. The dialogue feels inorganic and tries too hard at times. It tries its best to be the kind of movie that it is supposed to be. It isn’t striving to leave audiences sitting in their seats contemplating the meaning after the credits roll. It is just a movie to watch with a bucket of popcorn. The music it used is something I want to praise momentarily. It was reminiscent of the 80s with a synth heavy score which worked in its favor. Also, the attire of the cast for the most part also felt 80s. Even the profane nature of the younger characters felt like a more distant way we’d see kids on the big screen back in the day.
In some weird way, the movie is very cathartic. It explores this concept of man vs nature in a really interesting way. Instead of an innocent bear dying at the hands of some irresponsible drug dealers, the bear gets some form of revenge. Yes, the attacks themselves are essentially random. The bear is merely navigating the forest and attacks every living person it encounters, yet it is motivated and influenced by the cocaine that humans brought into the forest. The twist at the end also adds this layer that reframes the entire situation. Presenting a more sympathetic antagonist that is really a victim of its circumstances and it’s the humanity that causes its ailment that ultimately suffers the consequences. It highlights how mother nature can still manage to be the apex predator.
Movies like this always feel like reluctant watches. I don’t know if this counts as a creature feature, but I will say when I saw the trailers for this movie, I instantly doubted its merit? Some posh bullshit I think movies like Anaconda (1997) or Piranha 3D (2010) have kind of conditioned me to present when I watch movies like this. Not as good as Crawl (2019) but the way the movie surprised me was similar (but in a very very very different way). It was an enjoyable watch. Would I watch it again? Probably not. I wouldn’t go out of my way to catch another viewing, but I don’t mind the memory of the movie taking up space in my head for the next few months. I was honestly expecting worse.