It’s a million dollar idea wrapped up in 30 cent packaging: Cocaine Bear. It belongs on a Wall of Fame of great and terrible movie concepts along with Sharknado, Snakes on a Plane and Samurai Cop. Yes, it sort of happened, but the possibilities nevertheless run wild. Cocaine Bear. A concept for the ages.
The film does an admirable job of boosting its ridiculousness to a high level, but can’t quite land a narrative as befitting of its potential. For when you’re dealing with a bear high on cocaine, there is nowhere to go but to the absolute most extreme.
Written by Jimmy Warden and directed by Elizabeth Banks, the film starts with drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II (Matthew Rhys) throwing bags of cocaine out of a plane (before knocking himself unconscious and nosediving to his death) over Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. When an unsuspecting bear down below ingests the drug, she becomes a hulking, doping, ferocious monster. Youngsters Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and best friend, Henry (Christian Convery), wander out into the wilderness, resulting in Dee Dee’s mother, Sari (Keri Russell), chasing after them. Meanwhile, park ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and nature activist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) try to corral the young Duchamps gang (Aaron Holliday, J.B. Moore, Leo Hanna). And drug lord Syd (Ray Liotta) sends his grieving son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), and button man, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), to recover the lost shipment, hunted by police officer Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). One problem for all of them: there’s a raging bear high on coke wandering the woods.
The kills are numerous, gruesome and glorious. When the character drama falls flat, as it repeatedly does, there’s always the eager joy of knowing that soon someone is about to be disemboweled by six-inch claws in a manic fest of drug-induced carnage. In a packed house, hearing the roar of every violent death harkens back to the glory of the old B-movies of yesteryear.
But Cocaine Bear simply doesn’t go far enough.
There are some great kills to be sure, (especially a Midpoint ambulance attack) but the story begrudgingly gets in the way (yes, really). There’s too many characters and too much plotting, weighing the narrative down. We want to see a cocaine sniffing bear haphazardly murdering people in the woods. The plot should be minimal outside of that (think of other high concept films such as Predator or Tremors). With subplots about absent fathers, runaway kids, wayward campers and morose park rangers, there’s simply too much stuff getting in the way of the berserk bear.
A simpler story about a gang of drug pushers running through the woods trying to collect their coke only to get picked off one by one by a hulking bear hunting for the same coke would have served the narrative better. A theme about the evil of greed killing each of them off would have sufficed.
As such, Cocaine Bear is fun, but not as enjoyable as it could have been; give me fewer characters, more gore (yes, even more gore!) and an irredeemable plot where no one gets out alive.
Hardwired for Film 
Leave a comment