Film Review: Cocaine Bear

Cocaine Bear is for the most part exactly the kind of movie you’d expect it to be. Especially if you’ve seen any of the promotional material, which has gone viral over the past few months, and not surprisingly so. It is a wild premise, and while it may not be closely following the true events that it is based on, there’s just something inherently amusing about the general premise that seems to be capturing people’s imagination. Between the bear in this film and the doll in M3gan, it’s been quite the year so far for outlandish slasher killers who become fodder for internet memes.

Anyways, the story proper follows a group of people in the small Georgia town by the Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest who find themselves stalked and hunted by a bear who has found its way into cocaine dumped by drug smuggler from his plane, and is now desperate to satiate its desire for more. We mainly follow two groups, one is a Sari (Keri Russell), a nurse and single mother who is looking in the forest to find her daughter, Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), who skipped school to go out with her friend, Henry (Christian Convery).

The second is Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), who are sent out by Eddie’s dad/drug kingpin, Syd (Ray Liotta), to retrieve the lost cocaine. But we also get other colorful characters sprinkled in like Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) a detective who is looking to take down Syd and his whole operation, Liz (Margo Martindale), a forest ranger who’s attempts to get the attention of a visitor she has the hots for gets interrupted by Sari and eventually the bear, as well as the antics of a group of troubled teens who get caught up in all the wild activity during the bear’s rampage.

The film manages to do a lot of things right that movies like this often stumble around with. For one, it keeps things as simple as possible, it doesn’t try to complicate things unnecessarily, the plotting is very streamlined, and its ambitions are kept in check. It clocks in at about 95 minutes, including the credits, and that’s the perfect runtime for a b-horror-comedy like this. It knows what it wants to do, it understands the appeal of its story, and it aims to hit those marks with a skilled level of precision, which doesn’t come all that surprising since you got a comedy vet like Elizabeth Banks at the helm, working off Jimmy Warden’s screenplay.

The only times when the film does get a bit off-key is in how they handle the tone, mostly from a performance angle. The film works at its absolute best when it does treat itself like a suspenseful slasher film, and the characters are treating it seriously. I was especially enamored by Ehrenreich, who’s depressed character feels ripped right out of a drama. Whenever the performances lean into the goofy, putting on some kind of shtick, as if they become aware they’re in a comedy, that’s when the film is slightly less effective, but thankfully, it only accounts for a few moments or characters, who don’t detract from the overall picture.

And speaking of the film treating itself like a full on slasher, I was surprised by how committed the filmmakers were to making this as viscous as they can, it borders on full on nihilistic at times. You want to see a bear tear people apart, you’ll see it, and it’ll happen to people who did nothing to deserve it, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was delightful just how mean the film can be at certain points. It’s also very well made. John Guleserian gives the film a grounded yet slick look, the effects for the bear and the gore are genuinely great, and there’s a nice playfulness to the 80s tunes that play throughout the film without going into the well worn classics.

Ultimately, I was quite happy with Cocaine Bear. I had a really fun time with it, and it seems to play very well with a crowd, as it did with mine. While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a laugh riot, or one of the funniest things I’ve seen, it is consistently very amusing with a handful of killer jokes, pun intended. It does a great job at committing to the bit without ever coming across like a comedy sketch stretched out to feature length. It makes great use of its time, and it does a good job at keeping things light and entertaining, and a joy for folks are looking to have a bloody good time. Also, it’s just nice to see Ray Liotta, and this being one of his final movies is hilarious. He’s great, always was, he will most definitely be missed.

Cocaine Bear is now out in theaters.