Cocaine Bear

★★

Directed by Elizabeth Banks

Written by Jimmy Warden

Cocaine Bear is very, VERY loosely based on an actual incident in 1985 when a drug dealer tried to dump his stash of cocaine from an airplane, only to end up dead from a parachute malfunction, and his loot gobbled up by a wild bear who subsequently overdosed and died from its exotic meal. In the movie, the bear fictitiously went about tearing people to shreds in search for more of the white powder scattered across a forestry to sate its addiction. With the boffo box office that it’s doing (relative to its production costs), don’t be surprised to see more cheap bearsploitation films being released within a week.

I felt guilty for not defending M3GAN when people were deriding it for being silly and dumb. At least M3GAN had something to say, and that “audition” scene with the board of directors was absolutely riveting. Cocaine Bear had none of those. Outside of the cheap thrills of seeing a wild animal gratuitously dismember human beings, the majority of the movie was really dreary, with barely anything of interest to keep you engaged until the next bear rampage, while a number of other things even annoyed and frustrated. And speaking of bear rampages, the best and biggest set piece actually occurs in the middle section of the movie, which leaves the ending with a disappointingly unremarkable finish.

I did enjoy Aaron Holliday’s performance, who played one of the three smalltime crooks, and I did want to know if the bear survived by the end. (But not the humans, though.) The bear VFX wasn’t too bad.

If you enjoy B-movie schlock, go for it. For me, this felt like a waste of time. I doubt I’d ever revisit this movie again.