Cocaine Bear (Vicious Bear in Spain) is the true story of Pablo Escobear, an American black bear who becomes addicted to cocaine after finding bullets of drugs scattered in the woods and kills everything in his path to get a line. Well, the massacre itself is not entirely true. The bear overdosed and can be seen as a stuffed souvenir of the devastating effects of drug use in Kentucky. Luckily, the film deviates from reality in this regard, leaving Escobear on a rampage with a group of innocent hikers in the woods.
Elizabeth Banks can’t quite find her directorial identity after the horrific Pitch 2 and Kirsten Stewart’s dark Charlie’s Angels remake, but with the fantastic B-movie Cocaine Bear, the filmmaker seems to have hit the nail on the head. With a title like Cocaine Bear, you get exactly what you expect: gory, absurd humor, and it’s in the same vein as 2006’s Snakes on a Plane meme factory, but the difference is that Cocaine Bear really keeps its promises. more far-fetched than Samuel Jackson’s bland film. For example, unlike the Sharknado videos, there are also splash effects in this movie to back up the cheesy concept with a bit more beef.
It’s all very absurd, which is to be expected in an entertaining slasher, in which the characters mainly exist to be torn to pieces by the beast of the forest. The film offers enough bloody and bloody scenes to keep its target audience entertained. Plus, Banks manages to balance a great cast with a dramatic, cheesy ensemble that, for the most part, contributes to the film’s comedy. History is not meant to be taken seriously. Usually this simple story of cops, drug dealers and unsuspecting tourists taking on the cocaine monster works.
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Like a cocaine rush (in our writer Mackan’s experience), it features high-energy scenes that take the craziness to another level. For example, when our four-legged friend panics in the face of the paramedics, which makes it the best moment in the film. Cocaine Bear isn’t afraid to dispatch characters as quickly as they appear, but like a cocaine high (at least according to Mackan), he’s not always on top. Once the movie slows down, all of the film’s flaws, like bad dialogue and bland characters, become apparent.
Keri Russell generally does well, but she probably plays one of the worst characters in the movie. And sadly, Ray Liotta’s final performance went fairly unnoticed, which pops up in the latter part of the film to give something more serious to the matter, which usually drags its wild tone. I also think the movie scatters too much at the end rather than going full throttle. The editing also gets complicated towards the last part, where we see that the film could have gone well with fewer characters or at least offer a final bloody twist. The film could also have been balanced with more live effects instead of so many obvious digital special effects.
In the end, though, I had a lot of fun with the coke-stuffed predator. It’s exciting, entertaining, and wonderfully goofy, even though the movie could have been more or less the same. With Sam Raimi’s intense lines and well-integrated 80s music, Banks manages to inject a good dose of heartbreaking madness into all of us. This allows the director to be proud of having found a field to explore and develop.