Is Cocaine Bear Good? 3 Reasons The Film Is Not Remarkable

If you’re wondering “Is Cocaine Bear Good?,” then I can’t confidently say yes.

Cocaine Bear is a spectacle movie, with no real purpose rather than to enact the wild imaginations of an apex predator with a lethal level of ferocity on the loose. Apart from the “shocking” displays of gore, Cocaine Bear also cleverly crosses storylines of various individuals with widely different agendas whose lives converge around this monster bear.

Despite the various characters’ narratives and the terrifyingly unhinged and dangerously addicted Cocaine Bear, somehow this movie fails to pack a punch. If you enjoy blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore then Cocaine Bear is the movie for you. 

Is Cocaine Bear Good? | Review

Cocaine Bear is exactly what you think it is. Based on a true story, a bear finds and consumes a lot of cocaine dispatched from the sky, wreaking havoc on everyone who crosses its path.

**Heads Up** There WILL NOT be spoilers in this review.

These parts of Cocaine Bear stuck out to me the most: it’s hard to care about the characters, the bear isn’t that scary, and the comedic moments are iffy.

1. It’s Hard to Care About the Characters

Characters that feel real are crucial to horror thrillers. This gets the audience to care about whether they live or die. Now, this very well may just be that I wasn’t emotionally riled up enough to become invested in the characters but I didn’t really care much whether they survived the wrath of the Cocaine Bear.

There is such a disconnect where these humans don’t feel like real people, but instead, they feel like tools of gore and violence for the bear to play with. 

One thing that this film does really well, however, is making each individual’s motivations very clear. 

They all come in contact with the Cocaine Bear from different paths of life for different reasons. Some are trying to find the lost cocaine. Some are just going for a lovely hike. Some are trying to hunt down the cocaine drug dealers to arrest them. Some just want to skip school and paint by the river.

And the bear — the bear just wants cocaine. That’s all it wants. 

Each person’s absorption in their own desires and a disregard for the motivations of the people around them is an interesting concept and something I appreciated about the film. 

However, because there are so many converging storylines, you end up not really getting invested in any one character, meaning that if the bear does get them within its jaws, it just feels like just an unpleasant, bloody display of the bear’s immense strength and ruthlessness. It doesn’t feel like a loss.

2. The Bear Isn’t That Scary

To be honest, don’t quote me on this one. I was feeling a bit emotionally dull when watching this movie so it really may be just me, but the bear just wasn’t that scary to me. 

First of all, the bear just looks like a regular bear. The worst of it is when it had blood on its snout. But otherwise, it’s a cute, regular-looking bear that doesn’t really naturally inspire fear through a screen. 

Secondly, this bear does not care about humans, it only cares about cocaine. Give it its cocaine and then it’ll leave you alone. Really. 

Third, it is not superhuman. It’s not immune to gunshots. It’s not immune to puncture wounds. It’s just a lot more wild than usual. However, everyone who came in contact with the bear pretended as if they were powerless against it. 

Just shoot it! I kept thinking. Just shoot it.

3. The Comedy is Hit or Miss

In conjunction with all the violence, blood, and gore were moments of comedy. And actually, simultaneously with the moments of blood and gore was comedy. 

In the bloodiest, most gorey scenes, there was a light, upbeat retro soundtrack playing in the background. Nothing says this person’s life was just a means for body horror entertainment than an upbeat soundtrack over their dismemberment.

There were also some quite obnoxious characters who were used as comedic relief. 

The park ranger’s relationship with the wildlife expert was absolutely hilarious to behold. But the stupid stabbing teenagers in the bathroom – *Eye roll.*

In Conclusion…

Cocaine Bear was bloody, underwhelming, and just ok. Overall, I found it to be a Mediocre movie.

So, is Cocaine Bear good? It’s not a bad movie but it’s not a movie that I would gladly spend money to watch in a theatre. Thankfully, I was able to stream it for free on Peacock. It’s really an ok movie that delivers exactly what you would expect from a movie like this one. It really just lets the imagination run wild with this idea of combining cocaine and a wild animal. 

Unfortunately, it’s the execution of this concept that is quite underwhelming and stays very surface level, not giving us many layers, depth, or surprises to the story. 

It’s not that scary but rather just disturbing. And it’s disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, not really because it’s necessary for the threadbare plot. 

So yeah, Cocaine Bear is a bear on cocaine, tearing ish up. Nothing more, nothing less.

Rating 5.5/10 

What did you think of the Cocaine Bear? Let me know in the comments below!

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Peace, love, and lots of popcorn,

IMO