A Bear Did Cocaine
If you were told Elizabeth Banks is directing a new movie inspired by a bear that overdosed on cocaine, you would be shocked.
But if you heard that Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games is directing a movie about a bear tweaking out on cocaine, you would have to see it immediately! This film, matching her personality completely, titled Cocaine Bear, was released Feb. 24, 2023.
Inspired by true events, Cocaine Bear is the comedy horror everyone has been waiting for — just for the sake of curiosity. This film was inspired by a series of unfortunate events that took place in 1985 when 175 pounds of cocaine was dropped by drug smugglers in the wilderness of Tennessee. An American black bear found this dropped cocaine, ate it, and overdosed. This real life “Cocaine Bear”, also known as Pablo Eskobear, was found dead in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia with a stomach “literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” according to Chief Medical Examiner from the Georgia State Crime Lab, Dr. Kenneth Alonso.
The body of the bear was taxidermied and given to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, although it disappeared for a while before it was found again in a pawn shop. It now resides in Lexington, Kentucky on display in “Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall”. Although, there is no telling what the bear did between its ingestion of the drugs and its death, the imagination of Elizabeth Banks allows us to fill in that foggy area with her thrilling film.
Cocaine Bear is a campy horror comedy that thrives in its absurdness. What can one expect from a wild animal that consumes a very large amount of cocaine? The answer lies within this film — utter chaos. The film starts with the drug smuggler throwing the cocaine, and himself, out of the plane that is inevitably going to crash. Once his body is discovered, everyone gets involved, most without even knowing. The cop, played by Isiah Whitlock Jr., is prepared to track down the missing drugs before the infamous drug lord, played by Ray Liotta, sends his son (Alden Ehrenreich) and partner (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to get the dropped cocaine from the forest. The park ranger, played by Margo Martindale, has enough on her mind with reckless teenagers running around the park and trying to win the affection of the local animal-rights activist working at the park (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). A wild bear on cocaine is the last thing she wants to worry about. To make matters worse, a mom (Keri Russell) goes into the national park looking for her two kids who just want to paint the waterfall, but get swept up into the heat of running from the bear. This film is full of twists and turns that lead everyone to meet up and work together to, attempt to, avoid the bear. Meanwhile, this bear is having the time of its life, rolling around feeling a sense of freedom from this “wonder drug”, until the people bother it.
This film is not for the squeamish; it is gory, graphic, and everything in between. It is especially suspenseful, because you will be anticipating the next time you get to laugh at the comic killings from a bear on cocaine. If you remember that scene in Open Season when they drank the slurpees and ate all the sugar in the store, this is the adult version of that. This film is a fun and shocking interpretation of what a bear or animal would do while on cocaine, and is a must see for all horror comedy fans. See Cocaine Bear on Peacock as of April 14th, if you have the stomach for it!
Photo Courtesy of IMDb.
