Cocaine Bear (2023)

From what I understand the real Cocaine Bear consumed some of it's namesake drug which had been thrown out of a plane by smugglers and landed in its park area. It overdosed and died without any evidence that it had hurt anyone. But the idea of a coked out apex predator is a fun one filled with silly and frightening possibilities. This is where the film Cocaine Bear comes in, to run with those possibilities and deliver a fun, if irreverent and rather silly, time. 

Cocaine Bear is what you think it is going to be. It leans into its absurdity and pushes the limits of graphic violence to tell its story designed clearly to tap into our anxieties of drugs and wildlife in that way that makes us jump and cringe but also laugh out loud. Comic horror is often cathartic in the way it plays our concerns into things we can laugh at. Cocaine Bear acknowledges right away that it is silly with a script designed to be funny in that absurd way when characters say and do ridiculous things. It's attack scenes play out quite graphically, we often see the guts spill out for example, but always in ways that are a bit wink wink so we can laugh while we are recoiling. It always lets us "off the hook" by crossing the lines but giving us a laugh while its doing it. 

But Cocaine Bear also falls into some predictability and safe story telling conventions. The film follows a very well worn path of setting up who are cast of characters are and then disposing of them one by one in ways we can often see coming a mile away. I bet you can guess who are going to be the survivors (spoiler! it's the most sympathetic ones) from the get go. And there isn't ever much of a sense of surprise at what happens as it goes along. Also the film isn't quite as funny as it wants to be, partially because of how safe it plays out. 

Despite this Cocaine Bear ends up being almost as much fun as the trailers make it out to be. It is often quite funny and in the moments it gets going it is quite the ride. There perhaps is a little too much downtime between scenes. A tighter story might have worked a bit better. But the cast is truly having a good time and that feeling is infectious. While not the rollicking shocker it might have been Cocaine Bear is still a fun time if rather disposable. 

Cocaine Bear

Starring: Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ray Liotta, Christian Convery, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Aaron Holliday, Matthew Rhys, Kristofer Hivju, Ayoola Smart

Director: Elizabeth Banks

Writer: Jimmy Warden