Rent Cocaine Bear (2023)

Cocaine Bear review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Cocaine Bear feels like one of those joke films you’d see in a TV show, ala Sack Lunch in Seinfeld. There’d probably be some eccentric character trying to make a case for seeing the film. Don’t you understand? It’s a BEAR on COCAINE. Sure, the bear probably kills a bunch of people, but don’t you want to see how she ate all that cocaine and killed all those people? With a lesser director and smaller budget, sure, this could easily be another SyFy Channel creature feature of the week, bound for a crossover versus film with Sharknado. Thankfully, there’s a bit more to this picture than just the bear and the cocaine. Although, yes, there are a lot of bear kills and cocaine.

The wild part some may not believe is that this is based on a true story. Taking place in 1985, the drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II met an unfortunate end when he dropped from the sky with his cocaine. His plane crashed, and a bear got into the cocaine littered about a Georgia state park. That’s the bizarre story, but it’s ballooned into a horror comedy where the bear goes on a killing rampage while opposing parties fight over the cocaine.

Like any good slasher movie, this horror flick is engrossing for its hilarious characters assembled. They’re all acting with tongues relatively in cheek for the premise that spins together so many individuals. Ray Liotta is a mob man hoping to get that shipment of drugs back and enlists his grieving son (Alden Ehrenreich) and a short-fused gangster (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) to track it down. Christian Convery and Brooklynn Prince are two foul-mouthed kids who take off for the park and flee their lives from the drug-taking bear. Keri Russell is the matriarch who goes off to find them. Isiah Whitlock Jr. is the detective seeking the gangsters, while Margo Martindale is the park ranger seeking the kids.

Everybody in the cast brings their A-game to this B-movie. Watching Convery and Prince dare each other to do cocaine is absurd enough to appreciate the bizarre curiosity. Ehrenreich becomes a blubbering mess, slowly gaining the confidence to stand up against his mob dad and take charge. O'Shea Jackson Jr. is the perfect straight-man/short-fused enforcer who gets incredibly frustrated if his many fights lead to blood getting on his new clothes. Russell and Lioata are great, but I doubt I had to state that, given their resumes and ease of rolling with this type of material. Some love should be given to Isiah Whitlock Jr. for getting some of the best lines and delivering them with comedic perfection, remarking on the weirdness of a bear on cocaine. In terms of facing off against the bear, Martindale is the most fun to watch with her spitfire personality and ability to take a licking and keep kicking.

Okay, but what about the violence? Yes, you’ll see the bear gore people in the wildest ways. But hear me out; there’s also a good theme about the dynamics between parents and kids. Every character has some level of parental involvement that they struggle to deal with. Yes, this includes the bear who has cubs that she is protecting. The ultimate finale involves the coked-up cubs ripping out guts so it won’t soften up on its brutality.

If you desire to see a horror movie where a bear does cocaine and kills many people, Cocaine Bear will satisfy that itch. It delivers on what it promises with a few solid surprises in its bloody carnage of wildlife gone too wild. It could use some more to its emotional gore and maybe even some more blood and guts to send it over the top, but it gets the job done of being a doozy of a goofy creature feature.