Cocaine Bear

The titles speaks for itself. As funny as the title implies, this is a very well done parody-gore film. Trippy vibes with great effects and cast. Directed by Elizabeth Banks, yes, you heard that right, the actress. The co-host to Pitch Perfect’s accapella competition; and the one who starred as Rita Repulsa in the recent reboot of Power Rangers (2017) film. This film showed her quirkiness, mixed with dark humor. I honestly thoroughly enjoyed it.

Who doesn’t want to see a bear addicted to cocaine? The title is the premise itself, a 227 KG. black bear accidentally consumes a large amount of cocaine, which was dropped from an airplane by a drug syndicate. Assumingly, this was their way of not getting tracked by the police/government during the transportation of their goods. Which by the way, are based on true events.

What really happened in real life

Andrew Thornton was a narcotics investigator turned drug runner. He smuggled all the cocaine up on an airplane, and dropped them off in a forest called Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. Supposedly to be picked up by other members of the syndicate along with Andrew Thornton, who jumped off the plane but unfortunately his parachute failed to deploy and led to his untimely demise. The cocaine was then scattered all over the forest in duffel bags. The said black bear consumed a huge amount of cocaine, assuming it was food. According to the chief medical examiner, the bear lived for 30 to 45 minutes more after ingesting the cocaine, then succumbed to acute cocaine intoxication and died.
The drugs however was never found, presumably loads of cocaine are still scattered around the said forest.

Characters, music and effects

This is a great modern day, dark humor type of film. Its hard to take any of the cast seriously, even when they were being torn apart, I couldn’t help but giggle a little as their expressions were a bit funny. The way the film shows when a torn limb gets flung in front of another character was funny as hell, combine that with the great performance of each and every one of the cast members and you get a gold standard creature feature B-movie film.

The soundtracks were awesome, it gets you hyped up whenever the bear ingests more cocaine, and the music starts turning up. You can’t help but get that adrenaline rush together with the bear. Even in dead parts where nothing was happening, the music kept in giving. There were no dull moments. Just a fun thrilling ride.

Effects were enough to get me interested, specially the bear, I think they did it tastefully. For the type of film they’re making, the bear was awesome.

Great moment

During that final scene where the bear was was supposed to have died by the ledge after being shot by Ray Liotta. Then a brick of cocaine ripped open and was scattered in the air, a camera shot then shows the bear inhaling most of it was pure magic. The stoned bear gets back up and climbed to protect her cubs. Unfortunately for Liotta’s character, his neck got stuck in the handle of the duffel bag he was reaching for. So he was there, like a piñata, and a piñata he was. The bear clawed his belly and his guts fell off. Instant treat for the little cubs. It’s like Tinker Bell’s pixie dust inhaled by Tick-Tock the crocodile, imagine was it would do to Hook.

As I said, the oddball goofy cast was great. None of whom would’ve acted as they did in real life because they did so with so much quirkiness and unnecessary decision making. Which made everything as funny as it was, and it was also the reason why its hard to take them seriously. Ray Liotta as Syd was great, very fitting of his character. Huge shout out to the 2 kids stars, Christian Convery and Brooklynn Prince, stellar performance from the both of them.

Conclusion

Indeed the ratings are low and rightfully so., most of them gave a 6/10 but I’d give it a solid 7/10. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even moreso than watching Predator 2018. If you have time to watch some funny thriller animal on a rampage kind of films, this is the way to go. Pop open a beer, grab a slice of pizza and enjoy!