Film Review: Cocaine Bear

Director: Elizabeth Banks
Starring: Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson Jr.
Running time: 95 minutes

When audiences walk into a film titled Cocaine Bear, they know exactly what they’re getting. A bear high on cocaine running about a park for an hour and a half. It’s an over-the-top, gory, and dumb action flick centred around a bear getting accidentally addicted to cocaine.

While it is technically based on a true story (a bear did indeed ingest large amounts of cocaine in 1985), what happens afterwards is a fictional tale. In real life, the bear overdosed and died. Its body now sits stuffed in a mall in Kentucky, lovingly called “Pablo Escobear”. In the film, nothing of the sort happens. Instead of overindulging itself and meeting a swift, tragic end, the bear roams around a national park on a glorious killing spree, in a desperate search for more of that sweet, sweet powder. Here it feels appropriate to note that the bear in the film was CGI, and no real bears ingested copious amounts of cocaine during the making of the film...

Cocaine Bear largely balances horror and comedy, though goes in more for the comedy. The moments of action are mostly well-telegraphed jump scares, as the film doesn’t try to hide the fact that its monster is a nearly 200-pound bear - but this does come off as a bit of an afterthought, at times. The comedy, on the other hand, while not aggressively hilarious, is funny. It takes longer than it should to get started - with the first half spending a bit too much time establishing the cast of park goers - but the second half is much more full of cheesy and over-the-top laughs

The cast, for the most part, understand that they’re in a B horror-comedy, and don’t take themselves too seriously. Standouts include Margo Martindale as the park ranger Liz, Alden Ehrenreich as Eddie Dentwood, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson animal rights activist Peter, all of which fit the bill perfectly. 

Despite being about a high bear on a killing spree, and leaning into the gory comedy that ensues from that, this film is surprisingly emotional in places. Isiah Whitlock Jr’s character, Bob, a policeman who is trying to track the drugs, has a genuinely sad journey throughout, which is more than is to be expected for a flick called Cocaine Bear.

But in the end, audiences get the exact thing they went in for: a film that never takes itself or its premise seriously, and delivers some laughs in the process. And really, in an entertainment landscape of seemingly endless franchises, maybe this is just what’s needed.

Cocaine Bear is now showing at Savoy Cinema