Critical popcorn

The primary reaction I’ve had from people when I told them what I thought of Cocaine Bear is one of credulity. Like, of course it’s a bad film, it’s called Cocaine Bear! But I love a good, dumb comedy horror as much as the next person, and with Elizabeth Banks directing a cast of talented actors, I thought this might be at the very least fun. The thing is though, even the biggest, dumbest horror comedy should be well-written but when it isn’t, you can tell and this serves as an object lesson in this.

Like Snakes On A Plane and Hobo With A Shotgun, the title tells you all you really need to know. Based on the true story of a bear that ate a block of cocaine, this is really the only true story part of the story – in real life the bear ate the cocaine and immediately died, whereas in Banks’ film, it goes on a bloodthirsty rampage, killing all who cross its path.

My main issue with Cocaine Bear is that I don’t know what its point is. It’s clearly not intended to be scary, as the deaths are all played for laughs, but at the same time, there are no real jokes or big laugh scenes. It’s an often frustrating experience, because Banks has experience in both comedy (Wet Hot American Summer) and horror (Brightburn) and even a successful horror comedy (Slither) and yet tonally this is all over the place. She goes out of her way to make her characters likeable. There’s character actress Margo Martindale as the gruff, no-nonsense park warden, Isaiah Whitlock Jr as the deadpan detective hunting the cocaine, and Alden Erhenreich as the newly widowed gangster sent to retrieve the cocaine – he also gets perhaps the funniest line reading in the entire film.

It’s so counter-intuitive, in the few instances where we do grow to care about the characters, the death scenes are still executed in an almost gleeful way with their deaths serving more as a cheap punchline than anything else, and the film revels in the deaths, without any feeling of character loss. It’s a case of diminishing returns, after the third or fourth “surprise” death, the suspense has gone. There are films I love that go further with the violence, and they have a weight to them, whereas this brandishes its irreverence as an asset, and then rids us of any reason to care.

It’s crazy that Banks has corralled such a talented cast only to waste them so comprehensibly. Keri Russell, O Shea Jackson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ray Liotta all play the blandest of archetypes – when Ray Liotta is forgettable in a role, you’ve gone wrong somewhere.

Characters disappear from the film and/or face no repercussions for their often reprehensible actions, which in and of itself is fine I guess; not every wrong needs to be righted in a film, and often this leads to some brilliantly ambiguous endings, but here it feels more like these plot elements just get forgotten. There’s no sense of closure, aside from a clunkily added subplot about family that is more risible than in The Fast And The Furious, to break the story down into “this happened… then this happened.”

It’s not all bad though, the bear effects are impressive, and when you watch the film from the bear’s point of view it’s even more appealing. The idea presented by Banks, portraying the bear as the innocent party here, just retaliating against a bunch of idiots trampling through his home, is an interesting concept but heavily underdeveloped. The soundtrack is also great, featuring songs from Jefferson Starship, Depeche Mode and New Order, setting the film definitively in the 1980s, but again this feels like a half thought out idea, as the score gets bland quickly.

There are also great set-pieces in here – the ambulance chase is the clear stand-out, with suspense and a genuine sense of urgency that is absent from the rest of the film. It helps that the ambulance crew are really only introduced for this one sequence, so is removed from the rest of the action, almost feeling like a separate short film – It’s also a great showcase for TikTok star Scott Seiss who imbues his medic with more charisma and injects a serious amount of energy into the film in his brief screentime.

Also, this might be a minor point, but for all the cocaine flying around the film, nobody really seems to act as if they have taken any cocaine. It reminded me of Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, where everyone acts in a comically exaggerated way, but there is a textual reason for this, as the characters are getting delirious from blood loss. A film where a group of characters try to avoid a cocaine bear, while trying to battle the side effects of the cocaine they have just taken, would have been much more fun, but instead it feels like the actors forgot they’ve ingested a fair bit of cocaine.

A killer soundtrack, some intermittently funny dialogue and a handful of memorable performances can’t save the uneven tone of the film. There will be a demographic of people who just enjoy seeing people get killed in horrible ways, but when there’s no point to the story, no heart, there’s really no reason to watch it. You might not think that a film about a bear eating a ton of cocaine could be boring, but here we are.

Special Features

The Blu-ray has a comprehensive range of extras, including a commentary from Elizabeth Banks, deleted scenes, interviews with cast and crew, and outtakes. Most telling though, is the special feature going into forensic detail on the various death scenes – this is clearly the element that Banks spent the most time piecing together, and this is both the biggest asset and the film’s greatest hindrance.

Cocaine Bear is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital Download, order your copy on 4K/Blu-ray here: https://amzn/B0BY2X1SH9

Head over here for our feature on other animals AMOK in the movies, and if you fancy winning a copy of Cocaine Bear on 4K UHD, click here!