When all the dust has settled, Cocaine Bear will enter the B horror comedy movie Hall of Fame. It’s gloriously over-the-top gory, brutal, and unapologetic. Taking a single premise and stretching it to its limits, this is a movie that’s going to thoroughly entertain you. And the cherry on top is that it’s based on true events. The bear in question, Pablo Escobear, is currently on display in Lexington, Kentucky. Of course, as you could guess, none of the murder and mayhem actually happened. However, one bear was launched into the stratosphere for just a couple of scrumptiously surreal minutes.
Flying too close to the sun, the bear who did a couple of mills worth of cocaine suffered complete organ failure after what experts say must’ve been heavenly 15 minutes. The event is so crazy and such an eighties tale of drug-induced hilariousness that it’s difficult to comprehend it fully. Because of the aggressive marketing campaign and the overall buzz, I had to lower my expectations. However, Cocaine Bear turned out to be a highly entertaining and fast-paced horror comedy definitely worth watching. I especially like that it’s unapologetically brutal and visceral.
To watch a bloodthirsty black bear high on cocaine cause mayhem in a serene national park was a true pleasure. Under surprisingly good direction from actress-turned-director Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear is exactly the movie you expect it to be. Nothing less and nothing more. A fun creature feature distraction that’s going to put you in a good mood despite all the brutal deaths. Granted, the experience is a bit disjointed as you keep waiting for the bear to show up and stir some shit up.
I guess that’s down to relatively basic and clumsy character development. What I loved about this movie is the fact that most of the story unfolds during the day. This gives a new dimension to the events we’re seeing and I guess makes the next visit to any kind of a park an interesting experience. So, do not expect for the bear to be hiding somewhere in the woods and only appearing during the night. We will see it during the daytime and in its full glory.
It is the year of our lord Satan 1985 and cocaine smuggling is at its all-time high. We find the notorious drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II throwing out bags of cocaine from his plane somewhere above Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest. The value of the bags he’s throwing out is around $20 million and right away the party heads out there to find them. However, it would appear that someone got to them first.
Bears are incredibly powerful, something we had the opportunity to see in Revenant when poor Leo had to fight a huge one. When it comes to bear movies, I also recommend you check out Backcountry and the nineties classic The Edge starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. This year we had the opportunity to check out another movie featuring a killer bear, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. It turned out to be a horrendous and pretty dull movie. And this makes Cocaine Bear feel even better.
The cast was solid, led by two Juniors, Isiah Whitlock and O’Shea Jackson. Apart from them, I would like to single out two youngins, Brooklynn Prince and Christian Convery. This was also Ray Liotta’s final role as he passed away a week after the filming was complete. I’ll leave the familiar supporting cast for you to discover. If you’re looking for more movies like Cocaine Bear, I recommend you check out our Subversive Rabbit selection of Natural Horror Lists.
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Writer: Jimmy Warden
Cast: Isiah Whitlock Jr., Ray Liotta, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Keri Russell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Fun Facts: The title Cocaine Bear was just a working title the production used until they could come up with something better. Since they could not think of anything better, the title remained.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14209916/
