Cinema has some classic templates we’ve all seen before. For example, two people fall in love. Or, someone finds a magic ring/staff/wand/cape. Or two people fall out of love, or everyone is singing about falling in or out of love. Or a bear does a huge amount of cocaine. And of course, there is The Tom Cruise Picture.
Cocaine Bear, perhaps usurpringly falls into the “a bear does a huge amount of cocaine” catagory. I almost feel no need to set it up; it is simply one of cinema’s classic tales. If I must, Cocaine Bear is about a bear doing a HUGE amount of cocaine that it stumbles across in Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest in Georiga. A supposedley real story, we’re taken on the wild ride of a bear snorting 70 odd pounds of cocaine in 1985.
At a certain point, a review of a film like this can only take you so far. You’re either into the idea of Cocaine Bear - or you aren’t. You either look upon its title with a joyous glee, or roll your eyes at its inherent silliness.
Cocaine Bear has the large cast you’d expect from a movie with a high body count. Our focus is mostly split between Sari (Keri Russell), a nurse trying to find her daughter and friend, who skipped school and unwittingly crossed paths with the titular Cocaine Bear. Our secondary plotline follows Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), two drug dealers tasked with recovering drug kingpin Syd’s (Ray Liotta) cache of coke from the forest. Along the way, we encounter Forest Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who is tracking Syd and trying to take him down.
The main issue is, Cocaine Bear doesn’t seem to know what audience it wants to appease. It appears director Elizabeth Banks has tried to split the difference. On the one hand, she’s made a film with the flashes of high octaine, mad cap energy you’d expect from a movie called Cocaine Bear. On the other hand, she’s also trying to make a film akin to Jaws (methodical beast horror)… but it’s a forest instead of the ocean… and a bear on cocaine instead of a shark mostly minding it’s own business.
Cocaine Bear, for a film called Cocaine Bear, ends up being a little too… boring? Banks does a good job crafting tension in the earlier scenes of cocaine bear stalking around the forest, picking at it’s pray. But that tension, while engaging in the moment, costs the film an element of energy. Especially when some sequences of the film nail the over-the-top, comedic elements you’d expect. Like the fun chase scene involving cocaine bear charging down a fleeing ambulance. The performances also suffer from the same diadum of crazy and methodical tension. Some – like Russell and Jackson – seem to be in the Cocaine Bear movie inspired by Jaws or Crawl. While Martindale, Ehrenreich and Whitlock are all in the Cocaine Bear movie akin to Shaun of the Dead or Evil Dead II.
Red flags appeared in an early scene, when we were treated to our first splash of very-real-looking blood. Now, movies like this fall into two catagories: if the blood looks real, the film will try to scare you and add stakes to the violence in a grounded way. If the blood is as bright as a strawberry, you’re in for a movie where the gore is designed to gross you out, in a laugh-out-loud at the shock, kinda way.
This early blood-splash scene is the first real sign of tonal contradiction. The film’s actual opening, in which we’re given an explanation of how to survive a bear attack (cited from Wikipedia, no less) is the type of gonzo energy I was hoping for. Especially from a movie – and I cannot stress this enough – called Cocaine Bear. The realistic blood follow-up feels way off.
There is no real joy in any of the bear’s rampage. One of its earlier victims is killed in such a way that is more genuinely upsetting then it is amusing. This isn’t inherently a problem. But it is, again, at odds with the scene that directly comes before it. The film can never quite decide if it wants us to cheer for the bear’s violence, or fear it.
That being said, Banks shows she is more than capable of directing both sides of the Cocaine Bear coin. The sequence where the kids first stumble across the bear has a genuine tension to it that a lot of horror films fail to capture at all. And a sequence where the cocaine bear gets sleepy is equally well made, eliciting the “what is happening here” comedy you’d hope for.
Problems arise when trying to combine all of this into one 95-minute movie. You end up feeling the drag. The whiplash from scene to scene never allows the film to settle into a rhythm. And the final stretch feels like an eternity, when it should be the glorious crescendo of madness. A bit of a Cocaine Bore, if you would. It’s okay, I felt just as bad writing it as you did reading it.
Banks’ flashes of tonal comprehension show best in the direction she gave Ehrenreich, Whitlock and Martindale. The three of them give rise to the biggest laughs of the film, and are the only characters who treat the cocaine bear with the balance of fear and amusement that such a beast should inspire.
I think Ehrenreich’s performance deserves a specific shoutout. He really gets the tone of the film perfectly - even when Banks doesn’t. His Eddie is such a perfect sad sack, weighed down by very real and grounded issues. Ehrenreich contextualises this through a performance brimming with excellent comedic timing. An overtly talented actor, I’m personally very glad he’s back. And for the record, I think he was a good Han Solo, in a film that did him no favours.
Whilst I enjoyed some isolated segments a huge amount, sadly, Cocaine Bear ends up being a confused, cookie-cutter version of the insane story it was trying to tell. The film grants you some high highs before coming down into reality. I just wish its reality had been a little more engaging.
My new go-to cinema review but this is one film I’m going to pass on 😱