Cocaine Bear Movie Review – Bearly True Story
“Stop that.” (bear noises) Ahh, hello World Wide Web. I’m Decker Shado, the internet personality with the best hair. And man, that Winnie the Pooh blood and Honey review actually did like the best numbers I’ve seen on this channel in a while. So in the spirit of chasing the algorithm, let’s look at another bear themed horror movie with uh… Cocaine Bear! Based on a true story, ish. There was this thing back in the eighties when a drug dump went all kinds of wrong. And it is true that a bear did in fact find said cocaine and
ate a few million dollars worth of it, but it didn’t really result in a horror comedy about a coked out carnivore consuming campers He had a massive overdose and died and then got stuffed and put on display as Pablo Escobear. But in this version of the tale, the bear did not die but became Cocaine Bear! And it just so happens that the police, the rangers and the criminals are all incredibly stupid, resulting in a 90 minute romp of the body count rising in as humorous of a fashion as they could come up with. So let’s
take a look at Cocaine Bear and see if it passes the sniff test. The movie opens up establishing its distinctly set in the eighties, with eighties pop playing over a
found dead September 11th, 1985, splattered all over some poor bastard’s driveway, the jury is still out as to exactly what it was that prevented his parachute from deploying. also, this is a movie about a killer animal. So we need to get in that disclaimer about how animals are actually not that dangerous and usually don’t do cocaine. And they cite Wikipedia as a source. The comedy just keeps on coming. But it’s time to meet two hikers Olaf, played by Krisofer Hivju, and Elsa played by Hannah Hoekstra. They’re just out enjoying nature, making plans of the future,
picking baby names. And of course, Hannah mentioning that she really doesn’t want Olaf’s brother’s band to play their wedding for obvious reasons. “His singing is like shit.” Sadly, it still mattered back then. It was 11 more years before they invented Auto-Tune. This upsets Olaf so much he doesn’t notice the obvious bear track on the path or the huge bag of cocaine. Who needs foreshadowing when you’ve got fantastic vistas? And yeah, they do in fact, spot the bear, but they’re more interested in just how majestic and beautiful nature is than they are worried about their safety,
at least up until the bear begins to close in on them. “Whatever you do, don’t-” “Run!” “Oh, no!” “We need to go!” “I said don’t run!” And of course, as this is a horror movie, they do the dumbest thing possible in the situation, triggering the hunting instincts of the CGI bear performed by Allan Henry. As they run for their lives, we quickly lose track of the bear. So despite us knowing this bear is the monster of the movie Cocaine Bear. Yeah, we still got to obscure the killer. So Elsa is pulled into the brush by
that creature. But if we can’t clearly see it, how can we be so certain of her fate? Well, I guess his brother ain’t singing at the wedding, after all. Thus begins the body count of Cocaine Bear. So it’s time to bring us back to reality with Pee-Wee Herman teaching us not to smoke crack because this is based on a real story with a real news broadcast that may or may not have a real dead body in it. So let’s just skip on ahead back to the fake stuff. The man splattered all of the road. And
Detective Bob Springs, played by Isaiah Whitlock jr tells Officer Reba Mitchell, played by Ayoola Smart, that he knew this man. Thornton! Been chasing his drug operation for years. Thornton worked for Syd White, played by Ray Liotta. Thus there must be more cocaine out there somewhere. More importantly, though, Bob starts to talk to Reba about dogs and how nice it is to be able to play fetch with your dog. And that’s because his new dog is not a big manly mutt and incapable of playing fetch, at least for more than like four feet. But but but
but but. We’ve got the rest of the drug smugglers to introduce such as Daveed, played by O’Shea Jackson Jr. He’s also working for Syd. But Mr. White is upset with this recent turn of events. Not so much Thornton becoming lawn fertilizer as the fact that he’s stuck here babysitting his grandson and Daveed is tasked to recover the coke at once! Later. First, we have more characters to introduce. Sari, played by Keri Russell and her daughter Dee Dee, played by Brooklynn Prince, “Thought you were off tonight.” “We talked about this, remember? Me picking up some extra
shifts. You said you were okay with it.” Just your average mother daughter duo, single mom working hard to provide teenage kid being disobediant and disorderly whenever possible. And somewhere by the end of it all, I’m pretty sure someone’s going to be lowered into a smelting pit. Possibly Sari’s love interest, and possibly by Dee Dee as she has no kind words for her mother having the audacity to try to get a man. But to be fair, the choices aren’t all that great. Such as Eddie over here, played by Alden Ehrenreich. Drunk, disorderly and a drug smuggler.
Daveed is here to tell him that Syd White, their boss and Eddie’s father, has task to them with recovering the lost cocaine that must have been dumped somewhere in the forests of Georgia, which just so happens to be where Dee Dee is heading today, along with her friend Henry, played by Christian Convery, “But I gotta go pee.” “Go outside.” “Why do I skip school with you? You’re bossier than the teachers.” And they intend to play hooky and run off into the woods. Dang ol delinquents. They think they own this place. They can just run off
and get fresh air and sunshine. But we suddenly jump back to Bob. While he didn’t quite adopt the dog he wanted, Its handheld nature makes it very easy for him to pass it off to Reba as he can’t care for his new dog, considering, Hey, a trucker overheard Daveed and Eddie talking about that cocaine drop in Georgia, so he must go there for an investigation. Speaking of investigations, Sari has just learned that, hey, your daughter skipped school today. But wouldn’t you know it? When Henry went to pee, he just so happened to leave his backpack
behind, which just so happened to contain a map which just so happened to have their destination marked on it. How convenient! First things first, though, we need to introduce even more characters. The park ranger Liz, played by Margo Martindale, and one of the quote unquote, teenagers that terrorize these parts. Vest, play by J.B. Moore. But between his incredibly generic name and the fact that he is quite clearly played by a 28 year old, we can already figure out his chances of survival for this movie. he’s taken aback by the fact that Liz appears to be
dolling herself up, though, for she is preparing for the arrival of Peter, played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “You got a dusty beaver here, ranger.” “Yeah, well I’m working on that.” A wildlife inspection rep here to do a little survey. But Liz is far more interested in going full on National Geographic with the man. But back with the kids. Their planned hike is immediately sidetracked when Dee Dee discovers a brick of cocaine. Now, thanks to all those anti-drug PSAs, they know exactly what it is. But sadly, Pee Wee never got around to showing exactly what you’re
supposed to do with it. “How do I do it?” “You eat it.” “How much?” “Like, a tablespoon’s worth.” Now, I’m not saying I’ve got experience in these things despite despite what people say, but let’s just say that that is that is going to have one hell of a side effect. Because it tastes absolutely disgusting! Henry says Dee Dee just isn’t a cocaine eating pro like him. But when it’s his turn to chop snow, he reacts just the same and it’s hard to keep the facade going. It’s not their main concern for long anyway. As hey,
there’s even more cocaine over here. But something got into it. Cocaine Bear! “Don’t move a muscle.” “Listen to me…” But their lives are saved in the nick of time. By this movie’s incredibly jarring job cut editing. As Eddie and Daveed continue towards their destination. Shortly before we see Sari has reached her destination, she must find her daughter and insists on the help of the ranger. But Liz points out that Peter still has that inspection to do and can’t afford to be distracted. “Well I won’t be a burdon.” “I’ll get my hat.” Oh, don’t be so
upset, Liz. It’s not nearly as bad as when in Color Out of Space Nicolas Cage got cockblocked by an asteroid. So they head out to the start of their grand adventure right around the same time that Daveed and Eddie make it to Blood Mountain, Eddie’s still not feeling so great. So Daveed heads to the restroom to freshen up, but the delinquents arrive! Vest, along with his buddies Ponytail, played by Leo Hanna, and Kid played by Aaron Holliday. He doesn’t care about their threats or their knife as he kicks all the asses and takes all the
names, beating them all into submission. Spare one little mishap. They did manage to get in one good stab, not really enough to hinder him at all in the movie going forward, but it’s going to give him something to complain about. When Eddie comes into ask if he fell in, he is horrified to discover that Daveed beat up all the 30 year old children. But when checking if they’re all right, Eddie discovers a brick of cocaine. Thus they grab kid and convince him to tell them where they found the cocaine He says they stashed what they
found in a gazebo, intent on retrieving it after nightfall. “A gazebo?” “It’s- pavilion type structure.” “I know what the fuck a gazebo is!” “I didn’t.” I was wondering why you had to wait until nightfall to get it. There was one park ranger, and this is 1985. They convinced Kid to show them the location. After a little deal. Either he shows them or they blow his fucking head off. So they’re on the way to the woods. Also, Bob is still coming, in case you needed to be reminded and of course, Sari is here as well, trying
to find her daughter. there are clues here and there that she went this way. But the biggest hint is Henry, who has climbed his way up a tree. He says that they were attacked by a crazy bear and that bear took Dee Dee with it, somewhere. “Ugh-” (twig snaps) (bear sounds) And on the plus side, it couldn’t have taken her that far. As it invis-attacks Peter and Liz! long enough to separate everyone, then just runs away again. So everyone can be all tense and scared and unsure of what is going on. “What the..?” And that
was before the drugs! Sneaking up on Liz, Cocaine Bear mauls her ass. Then Batmans out of there once more, giving her the chance to run away to get help, of course. In the meantime, Peter rushes up a tree while Sari desperately tries to figure out what she’s supposed to even do in this kind of situation. “You’re safe. Bears can’t climb trees.” “OF COURSE THEY CAN!” “They why are you up here?” It’s a horror movie. When the killer attacks, you run up the stairs and given the options, this was the best he could do. In any
case, Sari’s still on the ground, just like the bear until it begins to climb the tree towards Henry. But remember, Henry is one of the few kids in this movie actually played by a kid. So the bear can’t kill him. But when it gets a whiff of the cocaine all over Peter, it just can’t wait to run over and kill the ever loving fuck out of him. This does mean that Sari and Henry can take the opportunity to escape as cocaine Bear is distracted by the need to do a line off Peter’s severed leg. Anyway,
Henry can finally explain to Sari that he and Dee Dee found cocaine and the bear ate it and kind of started killing everyone like Peter. “I’d love to not remember that but it kind of seems like the thing that stays with a man forever.” Yeah, but Hey, look on the bright side. You could always grow up to become an emotionally unstable, societal outcast who gets by, by looking at fictional depictions of people being dismembered and telling people what to think about it. But on the downside you will be cursed to always have to do a
call to action, reminding people to like the video and subscribe for more content like this. Henry points the direction that the bear took Dee Dee But we switch over to the ranger station where Liz meets up with Vest and Ponytail. They already called the ambulance over being attacked. But there’s some crossed wires and while they’re talking about Daveed, Liz is still talking about the bear. More importantly, there is someone outside. “Wait wait wait, you’re gonna shoot him?” “By hell, yes I’m gonna shoot him. He took a bite out of my ass!” “What the fuck is
wrong with this guy?” Hey, don’t knock it till you try it. Thus Ponytail opens the door but is surprised to find out it’s a bear outside. So he stands there while Liz closes her eyes and blows his brains out. Ponytail’s brains. Not. Not the bear. The bear’s fine. As such Vest moves the corpse of his friend out of the way so they can close the door and Liz can continue waving the gun around, terrified, wondering just where the bear could be. At the front door again. But we got to keep jumping back and forth everywhere
with this editing, showing that the smugglers are still walking and Bob has made it to the blood mountain parking lot. While Sari and Henry have found red splatters of paint. “Looks a lot like blood. How can you be sure?” “I’m a nurse, Henry.” Honestly, I seen plenty of movies where the blood doesn’t even look that good, so I thank them for pointing that out. this is important because Dee Dee had paint and has left them a trail of paint to follow. That’ll take a while though. So let’s introduce new characters! Nothing fancy, just the paramedics
the 30 year old teens called. Beth, played by Kahyun Kim and Tom played by Scott Seiss. Walking into the station full of dead bodies, they are a bit confused as the call was for a minor concussion. But upon investigating further, they discover that Liz is still alive, barely hanging on with labored breathing. Beth tries to make sure she’s all right while Tom notices a room full of blood and wonders just what he might find inside… Jesus. All the animated bears before just ate the cereal and left the kids alone. So they must run! Beth and
Liz get into the ambulance and Beth straps her in and floors it, leaving Tom to run behind and barely make it to the ambulance in time. But it’s not over yet because this bear is coked out of its gourd and has no problem chasing down an ambulance throwing Liz out the back to smash into the asphalt and die, mauling Tom to death and causing Beth to crash the ambulance flying through the windshield to her own demise. Really? 84% of EMTs don’t wear their seatbelt because it interferes with their job. Well, die and learn I guess.
So they’re fucking dead. But you know who isn’t? The smugglers still walking the trails with kid looking to find the gazebo. But before they do, who would just so happen to get there first? But Detective Bob Springs, However, he doesn’t know the cocaine has been stashed here until he reclines and spies a duffle bag hidden away on the roof. Which means by the time Kid gets Daveed and Eddie to the gazebo, coke ain’t up there anymore. “I’ma give you one more chance. WHERE’S THE-” “Put the gun down, and move away from the teenager.” Or rather,
the coke is still up there, along with a full grown man with a gun, which he just didn’t notice until now. But Bob gets Daveed to lower the weapon and then he moves to get down. Except it’s a bit of a drop. And he’s not exactly a spring chicken. He’s just two weeks from retirement. “How’d you get up there?” “Well I jumped from that tree over there, but… I hurt my hip a little.” It’s a lot easier to pull off those Lara Croft acrobatics when you’re not in frame. Also, it makes the outfit far less
embarrassing. Seeing his chance Daveed goes for his gun, but gets his fingers blown off. But that just pisses him off and he gets his gun anyway, leading to a standoff, at least up until Cocaine Bear shows up. Or rather, it’s still a standoff, but a different one. No one knows what to do and the bear is acting weird. Kid and Eddie remain flat on the ground. And before you know it “Fuck…” No surprise, after being so damn high, all movie the bear was bound to crash sooner or later. So new crisis. Eddie’s being crushed by
a bear. And because this is a horror comedy, nobody knows what to do about it. So they can stay like that for a while. When we move back over to Sari and Henry, who have found none other than Olaf. So either the opening wasn’t that long ago. Or this man is terrible at running for his life, but he does know where to find the lair of the cocaine bear. Oh, that’s right. The cocaine bear That is currently collapsed on top of Eddie. And they didn’t know what to do about him. “The bear is a girl.”
“How do you know that?” “Because it’s vagina is on my ear.” Okay, I don’t know about the bear, but evidently, after being folded over himself backwards and flattened, Eddie is definitely dead. But when Daveed went to check on the status of the bear, he also dropped a spare bag of cocaine. And as it turns out, the best part of waking up is jamming several kilos of Florida snow down your throat. That’s a hell of a pick me up. Now Cocaine Bear is high. Incredibly high, trippin like she’s just done some Molly. She continues to rub
all over Eddie and no one knows what to do except for Bob. “There you go. There you go.” “It’s like cocaine Christmas.” So you see, she’s not evil. The bear just really likes cocaine. And the killing people is just kind of happenstance and pursuit of cocaine. Please ignore the deaths of Liz and Elsa and the paramedics. Tossing a brick into the woods, Bob gives the group the chance to escape. But Daveed won’t leave millions of dollars of dope to the detective And the standoff continues until Bob is shot by someone else. Syd White. I guess
he’s finally done babysitting, Thus, kid decides to just say fuck it and leave. But now that he’s here, they can update him on the situation. Daveed’s short a few digits and they’re already down millions of dollars worth of coke because the bear won’t stop fucking eating it. But that doesn’t matter to Syd. He might be the boss of these two, but he’s only a small fry in the big picture and his boss won’t accept a sob story about feral fiends. This is much bigger than any of them as we see when Syd tries to get
Bob to tell him where the bear went. But Bob ain’t talking. But then “What? What are you doing?” “I’m sorry, Bob.” “I’m sorry Bob.” Reba is also in on it. No, this doesn’t make anything make any more sense. But this is big. Yes. Betrayal, emotion. Realizing his world is crumbling around him, Bob uses his final breaths to ask Is Rosette the dog okay? Reba ensures him she’s fine. But Syd takes the opportunity to say that if Bob doesn’t tell them where the bear went, he will kill the dog! “Oh no, no please, don’t do that.”
“I’d vote for not killing a dog today, but that’s just me.” yeah, he is the bad guy. But we’d all prefer him to not to veer so sharply into downright irredeemable. Bob thinks they’re fools nonetheless, and points the way and dies. Oh, well, Free coke. The bear is bringing it back to her lair. Right around the same time we see Sari and Henry finally made it there, thanks to Olaf’s help, of course. But he’s too afraid to go inside. After all, who knows what awaits within “They look like polar bears.” Nah. Wrong kind of coke.
So it’s fine. Look, the cocaine bear is a cocaine mom who has been working hard to provide her cubs with enormous amounts of cocaine. Mom of the year, everybody. Speaking of which, Sari has fought through hell and finally found Dee Dee. She even faced down a cocaine bear. Ish. Didn’t exactly go toe to toe with the beast. That’d be Olaf over here being brutally murdered off screen. Evidently, they decided against it being front and center, because at this point in the movie, The Bear is kind of a good guy. So in order to maintain that,
don’t have them just killing people left and- I mean, they can still kill people. They can still do that. It’s just we can’t see it. Fantastic. Olaf’s distant cries tells the group that they better hope this cave has a back door! Along the way, they find an amazing waterfall! Such a location would be a fantastic place for a final epic confrontation between good and evil. On a completely unrelated note, who would just so have to find the cave next? But the smugglers finding more half eaten cocaine, Syd says they must press on because there is
more. But Reba has had enough and decides to say fuck it and leave. But what’s this? Ray intends to retire her permanently, but not so fast for Daveed double crosses his boss, preventing him from double crossing his double crossing double crosser. “When did you all get so soft?” Well, the bear has transformed from mindless monster to misunderstood mother. So everyone’s got to start posturing to make sure that they aren’t the real bad guy of this movie. that way when they press on and just so happen to find the scared family trying to survive this ordeal,
Syd keeps his eye on the prize. There is cocaine here and like a mad completionist he’s got to collect them all and he will kill all the helpless women and children who get in his way. But before he can procure the new bag, the cocaine cubs get aggressively cute and cuddly, unable to fight back with his long rifle, he tasks son with killing them, but he has had enough and refuses to murder innocent, drug fueled wild animals. “Coward. Daveed! Here, catch.” “I am taking the fucking children home!” But what’s this? Sari uses her magneto powers
to intercept the rifle and save her own ass. And the asses of all those present. Hey, wait a minute. Cheesy, heroic speeches are fun and all, but this movie isn’t called Don’t Fuck with Rifle-Mom. It’s Cocaine Bear. And the cocaine bear shows up, causing the family to flee. Syd to distract the Cubs with some spare drugs. And while Eddie and Daveed flee, the final battle ensues. Syd shoots cocaine bear, causing her to slip and fall to her death, traumatizing the Cubs and giving Syd plenty of time to get the last bag of cocaine. But wait!
A spare bag of coke falls down and explodes. Raining life-giving cocaine onto the bear, returning her to life where she can rise up and take out Syd! I guess humans were the real cocaine fueled animals after all. Therefore, happy ending! Sari has saved the day. And maybe found a new man. Can’t confirm that till the sequel. And Reba takes care of Rosette. All the way across the parking lot before she dumps the dog onto Eddie. “Who’s dog is this?” “I think it’s mine. Mine and Gabe’s.” “Is it on cocaine?” No, but you’ll probably get some
PTSD flashbacks every time she gets the zoomies. Anyway, that was Cocaine Bear. And it is good and bad in all the right ways and some very wrong ways as well. Of course nobody went into watching Cocaine Bear expecting jaw dropping cinema. But it’s honestly surprising how the overall film quality came out, I suppose you could say. The plot is straight out of The Asylum. But this thing’s a Universal movie. And while not nearly convincing, the CGI work for the Bear is quite a cut above anything The Asylum could have produced. Not to mention it has
a whole lot more screen time as well. Despite this, though, there is one persistent problem from start to finish that really, really drives me nuts. The cuts. Editing in a movie is as important as the direction, acting and cinematography cuts from shot to shot need to happen, but you want the movie to flow. So there are certain techniques movies use to minimize the impact of a cut like changing angles during a character motion, or not cutting from moving shots to still shots and all kinds of things that this movie gleefully throws out the window, resulting
in a jumpy, difficult to follow production. This means when the movie does things that are honestly normal like switching between different perspectives or of different sub stories, the harsh nature of the cuts leaves the whole thing feeling a lot more jumbled and poorly paced than it actually is. But but. But like I said, nobody watching this expected jaw dropping cinema. So what did we expect? A bear on cocaine killing a bunch of people. And we get that. Mostly it ends up morphing into a misunderstood, beautiful creature of nature on cocaine, which is. Yeah, we heard
it all before. It would be nice if a newer movie about a killer animal could be made where the killer animal was just straight up evil. And we just got to deal with that. But I must admit, the cocaine cubs are cute. At the end of the day, I feel like Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey was underrated, but not by much. And Cocaine Bear is overrated. But similarly, not by much. It’s a fun romp in horror comedy with that eighties twist. That means the soundtrack is mostly synthesizers and electric guitars. And I did have
a great time, even if the editing was fighting me the entire way. Coming in at three big bags of blow out of five. And at the very least, we can thank this movie for inspiring new drug fueled animal films coming soon, such as Cocaine Shark or Methgator. View that as a positive or negative at your own discretion. Thank you all for watching, I have been Decker Shado. And remember, don’t feed the bears. This includes picnic baskets, hard drugs or fellow hikers. “Don’t be mad, but… …we skipped school.” “No shit, Henry.” And don’t click away just
yet. We’ve got to work on that end screen element engagement, remember? So what other movie is good horror comedy I’ve done recently? It’s not really related to cocaine or bears, but hey, Tucker and Dale versus Evil, that’s a great horror comedy. I highly recommend it. And the editing is a lot better in that as well. And if that’s not your thing, then there’s the algorithmically selected recommended video. The editing is probably better in that as well. But you know, Cocaine Bear is real special in that regard.
