I Watched "Cocaine Bear" And Here Are My Thoughts As It Unfolded In Front Of Me

I Watched "Cocaine Bear" And Here Are My Thoughts As It Unfolded In Front Of Me,"I’ll never take a walk in a forest in the same way again."

I Watched “Cocaine Bear” And Here Are My Thoughts As It Unfolded In Front Of Me

If you didn’t already know, Cocaine Bear is THE movie of 2023, and it came out yesterday in cinemas. Here is the trailer…

7. I’m sorry, does the bear have a six pack??? Hilarious.

It’s really hard to tell how seriously this film is taking itself. Like, it’s very tense but also so absurd.
It also just occurred to me again that this is Ray Liotta’s final film. I wonder how he felt about that.
We’re meeting A LOT of characters – we have a woman and her young daughter living in the area, her daughter’s friend, the two hikers from before (sorry, one hiker R.I.P.), Ray Liotta as Syd the drug kingpin, his son, a fixer, two police officers, a gang of three teen delinquents, an incompetent park ranger, an animal rights activist who is with the ranger, and one rolling bear… Obviously.
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11. One of the police officers has a little fluffy dog… That dog is not long for this world, I’m telling you. It’s gonna get savaged by Cocaine Bear. That is Chekov’s fluffy dog.

12. Okay, the young girl (Dee Dee) and her friend (Henry) want to cut school and go hiking, but ? today ? is ? not ? the ? day, ? KIDS!

13. Henry found one of the coke parcels in the forest and is telling Dee Dee how to consume it, which he apparently does all the time. Oh, ten-year-olds are funny.

14. He believes you eat it on a spoon. I guess he’s right, how would I know…

15. She’s telling him to have some now. Yes, Dee Dee! This is the chaotic energy I want in this film.

16. Cocaine Bear is back and she roared right in Dee Dee’s face! I’m sorry, I’d be inconsolable on the ground at that point. Fairplay to Dee Dee for trying to run off, but not sure she got far.

17. Okay, back to the park ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and the animal rights activist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson – I did not recognise him AT ALL, I only found this out as I was writing).

18. I’m sorry, is Liz into Peter, who is obviously fruity? Liz, I know you’re alone in the wilderness a lot, but I don’t think he’s the man for you.

19. Between this and The Watcher, Margo is really playing a lot of utter bastards these days. I’m going to think about her in the Hannah Montana Movie to even the scales a bit.

20. Okay, the fixer from before – known as Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) – has just laid out those three teen delinquents in like ten seconds. What a badass. I can see why he’s a fixer.

21. There’s actually so much going on in this movie, it’s hard to keep track!

22. So Dee Dee’s mum Sari (Keri Russell) is out looking for her daughter, and she is wayyyyy too chill about the fact that there is a rampaging bear in these woods where her kid is missing.

23. She’s with Liz and Peter now, and they’ve found Henry up a tree high on cocaine and shouting at them about the bear. Just an average day for a ten-year-old in Georgia then.

24. Alright, Dee Dee isn’t dead, but the bear took her. Seems like a random thing for Cocaine Bear to do, but glad Dee Dee is still kicking about.

25. Okay, Cocaine Bear is on the warpath again. She doesn’t have a six-pack by the way, I don’t know what I was seeing before.

26. The bear has attacked Peter, but everyone else managed to escape, more or less. Peter got savaged though, and yes, it was gory af. If you don’t like gore, this movie is maybeee not for you.

27. How long does a cocaine high last? Not very long, right?

28. Oh, don’t worry, she’s refuelling. She just did a line off of a disembodied arm.

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29. Liz has run back to her ranger cabin and managed to accidentally shoot another one of the teen delinquents. She doesn’t care though, she’s obsessed with Cocaine Bear. Cocaine Bear is her Moby Dick.

30. Why am I so invested in this movie? It does have a real horror-like tension to it.

31. Okay, it’s not Liz vs. Cocaine Bear anymore. Liz is dead. The bear won.

32. Hold up, an ambulance has pulled up and Liz isn’t dead after all!

33. If you’ve seen the trailer, this is the part of the movie where the paramedic gets stuck under a fallen door and Cocaine Bear roars in his face. It’s great.

34. Okay, the paramedics have somehow escaped with Liz in the ambulance and are speeding away from the pursuing bear. Some excellent music choices are being made here, we’re talking Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” over the top of a murderous speeding bear chasing an ambulance.

35. Okay, everyone from this little vignette is now dead, officially. Liz died in a particularly brutal (kind of funny) way – her stretcher rocketed out of the ambulance and she landed face down on the road and skidded along for like ten metres.

36. Change of pace, some bad bih has turned up in the forest with a gun and is a rocking pair of fab boots. Who is this fierce woman?

37. Oh no, it’s Syd. The boots confused me. Still fab though.

38. He has one of the police officers with him, who is clearly bent and here to help recover the drugs. Who saw that coming?!?

39. Meanwhile, Henry and Sari have found Dee Dee in the bear’s lair and THERE ARE COCAINE CUBS!!!

40. They are so cute. Cute and high.

41. Syd has turned up and is after a bag of coke hanging above a waterfall beyond the lair. He’s not going home without that bag apparently.

42. No, he’s hitting the cubs with his gun. STOP IT, SYD!!

43. Sari has decided to jump off of the waterfall’s edge with Dee Dee and Henry, which is a wild thing to do, but fair.

44. Now Cocaine Bear is back and she’s not pleased that people are in her house.

Universal Pictures

45. Syd vs. Cocaine Bear is giving me unwanted Brother Bear flashbacks, especially given that her cubs are right there!

46. In fact, this film kinda feels like Brother Bear meets Goodfellas, so it makes sense that Ray Liotta is in it.

47. You know what doesn’t make sense? Syd just got totalled by Cocaine Bear and now her cubs are pulling out his intestines.

48. I wonder if Ray read that scene and was like, yes, sign me up.

49. In other news, Sari, Dee Dee, and Henry are just fine.

50. Henry just said something like, “I wish I hadn’t seen what I’ve seen. I’d like to say I’m going to forget about today, but it kind of seems like the thing that stays with a man forever”. Henry is jokes, guys.

51. Okay, you know that fluffy dog I mentioned earlier? It’s fine, I was wrong, okay.

And we end on Cocaine Bear playing nicely with her cubs until she notices some hikers filming her and gets fired up again. Cocaine Bear 2?
Of course Cocaine Bear 2, they’ve made six Sharknado movies!

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s great! Not too long, not too cringe, funny and scary at times. I do feel like putting actually ~good~ actors in this was truly the way to go… Like Margo, Ray, Keri, O’Shea lift this film up for sure. I kind of wish they hid the bear from the viewer for longer and built up some tension there, other than that, a solid action comedy horror disaster film! Although, I’ll never take a walk in a forest in the same way again.