Relying on an almost postmodern meathead premise, Cocaine Bear is mainly notable for how doggedly it tries to pass off patently ridiculous plot points as having enough credibility to survive 90 minutes of complicated exposition. We have cocaine, and we have a bear, the combination of which leads to the kind of bloody carnage that’s meant to tickle the funny bone as opposed to stimulating fright responses. The premise itself is reportedly based on a true story from 1985 about a bag of cocaine dropped from a plane into a Georgia forest that was eaten by what is believed to have been a bear. No one knows what happened to the bear, but rumors were inevitable (most likely it died from toxic shock), and now someone has decided to extrapolate on those rumors to their most ludicrous ends. In a nutshell, our ursine protagonist—a female, which itself becomes a vital plot point—goes ballistic and just has to have more, meaning: instant junkie. Anything between her and more blow gets mowed down with savage efficiency.

So the whole point is to provide human fodder for the bear, and screenwriter Jimmy Warden and director Elizabeth Banks do a respectable job of devising subplots that can be intertwined to that end. After introducing the bear by means of an unlucky couple hiking through the woods, we see, in flashback, the obviously stoned drug courier dumping the coke-filled duffel bags from the door of his small plane and inadvertently knocking himself unconscious. Then we’re presented with the most entertaining of the various subplots: two adolescents (Brooklyn Prince, Christian Convery) who skip school to visit some waterfalls in the woods where the cocaine has landed. On their journey, they happen upon one of the bags and make some pretty good jokes about either selling it or snorting it. Meanwhile, the girl’s single mother (Keri Russell) starts to get worried when she finds out her daughter’s playing hookie and goes looking for her. There’s also a park ranger (Margo Martindale) accompanying a wildlife expert (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) she has the hots for as the latter does some research. Of course, there’s the drug honcho (Ray Liotta, in his last movie appearance) who owns the product sending his dimwitted son (Alden Ehrenreich) and the son’s more sensible friend (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to retrieve the drugs. Finally, there’s the inevitable police officer (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who has been tasked with finding out about the plane crash. 

All these vectors eventually come together but not before crossing paths with the bear, who deserves to be called the protagonist even if she’s the creation of motion capture technology. There is a measure of desperation to the bear’s behavior that really does convey inebriated rage. The gore and severed limbs are served up al dente without a lot of sympathy—you actually end up rooting for the bear not because the humans are evil, but because they’re dumb—and on balance the gross stuff doesn’t make an impression either way, probably because Banks doesn’t provide much in the way of suspense. It works better as a comedy than as a horror movie, but one-joke features are really difficult to pull off. 

Opens Sept. 29 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Cocaine Bear home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Universal Studios