Cocaine Bear is very very very loosely based on a true story about a black bear that stumbled upon and ingested bags of cocaine that were dumped in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest during a failed drug smuggling attempt.

Cocaine Bear

Unlike the real-life story of Pablo Eskobear, who died almost immediately after ingesting nearly $2 million dollars worth of cocaine, Cocaine Bear goes on a drug-fueled murder rampage as it hunts for lost bags of nose nuggets that have been distributed throughout Chattahoochee National Forest. In the meantime, some kids get lost in the woods and a mother goes looking for them as the drug dealers responsible for the errant booger sugar go hunting for their millions in lost product.

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It sounds like the setup for something really fun. I know that I was more excited to watch this than almost any other film announced for this year. Unfortunately, director Elizabeth Banks has managed to prove that the unmitigated mess that was 2019’s Charlie’s Angels wasn’t an accident. She is entirely out of her depth behind the camera, with no sense of structure or how to tell a visual story. Thanks to her ineptitude, Cocaine Bear fails on every level. It’s not suspenseful, it’s not funny, and for a movie of its type, it’s not particularly scary or gory. It’s not much of anything.

The movie transitions from scene to scene with almost no emotional or thematic tether to one another. Instead, it jumps from monster movie parody to screwball comedy to serious horror with all the grace and subtlety of a 200 lb black bear high on coke.

The performances range from out of place to the worst that a high school drama department has to offer. In what would be the last role before his death, Ray Liotta’s character has a mullet and a gun, but he’s Ray Liotta…do you get it? Ray Liotta is known for playing tough guys…and he’s got a mullet…do you get it…isn’t that funny?

Cocaine Bear is billed as a dark comedy but the humor peaks at an observation that a sign in the national park looks like it depicts two deer screwing…do you get it? It’s a picture of deer mating…do you get it now?  No? Well, how about this: at one point the bear passes out on top of someone and it’s revealed that the bear is a female. We know that it’s a female because, according to the smushed person beneath it, its “vagina is” up by his ear. Bear vagina, hilarious! Never mind that the guy’s head is underneath the bear’s chest.

Even the easiest gags are beyond Bank’s ability to handle. Early in the movie, there’s a scene that is clearly supposed to be comedic in which two young children ingest copious amounts of cocaine, and that’s the joke. The two don’t get high and behave ridiculously…you know like the Cocaine Bear. In fact, their behavior doesn’t change at all. They take the absurd amount of coke and then we’re off to the next scene.

All-in-all, Cocaine Bear feels like a student film from a first-year student at a 2nd tier film school. If you want to watch fun B-film horror, watch Critters. If you want pulse-pounding action horror, rewatch Aliens. If you want quality dark comedy horror, watch The Burbs. Whatever you do, don’t pay to see Cocaine Bear. It’s not even bad enough to be good.

Woke Elements

• For the few meaningful (I use that word very loosely) moments that they share any screentime, the mother-daughter relationship is one in which the mom asks the 12-year-old for permission to do things like go on vacation. The child is snarky and disrespectful, but it is treated as though her behavior is cute.
• It depicts young children ingesting enough coke to kill someone their size and has them shouting out curse words throughout the film…because the corruption of the innocent is funny…right? If the scene were even remotely funny, it could be forgiven but Banks handles it with what is becoming her trademark hackiness.