I’m not usually this on top of trendy movies, and for that matter I don’t know if Cocaine Bear is actually trendy. Judging by the turnout at the theater (including one guy who showed up in a bear costume) and the memability of the movie’s premise, I’ll assume that it’s at least known about. No spoilers ahead.
- At ~$30 million, Cocaine Bear sits in the mid-budget category — just above Everything Everywhere All at Once and just below Knives Out. There’s a really persuasive argument by REKRAP (and elsewhere) that the demise of mid-budget cinema is bad for movies as a whole. Mid-budget movies can’t afford top-of-the-line spectacle, but good ones make up for it by getting very creative with the resources at their disposal. $30 million is still a ton of movie. We’re not talking about short films here. But in filmmaking, it’s at the sweet spot of affording great talent (but not idols) and creating great effects (without an overwhelm of CGI). Some examples without adjusting for inflation: No Country for Old Men, Blade Runner, Hero.
- It’s a lot of fun. Like, you’d have to be Grape Nuts level boring to make this movie and make it boring. Cocaine Bear does a lot of “goofy suffering” humor, and it’s not for squeamish moviegoers. I probably would have switched it off if I was watching it at home. But my friends and I ate a bunch of barbecue, then saw it in theaters with popcorn and beer. Made for a solid night.
- What Cocaine Bear doesn’t do as well, in my opinion, is capture the magic of goofy horror movies. Slashers — and not to sound like a broken record with my No Country take, but I think Cocaine Bear is uncontroversially a slasher, or at least a splatter thing — succeed when they marry the over-the-top and the self-serious. Scream works as parody because of the year it came out (at the end of the Golden Age of slashers), but also because it’s just good horror. Plus it does something new by adding a whodunnit element. I can’t explain exactly what I mean, but Cocaine Bear feels like a two hour punchline. It’s a fun watch, but I’m not sure it has many opinions about what a horror movie should be.
- One stance the movie does take, which is very refreshing, is that it’s not fun to gut characters in the middle of their plotlines. For the kind of movie it is, it uses death pretty judiciously. Ditto, the bear is treated more like an animal than like Jason Voorhees, which I love.
Quick aside, but there’s a language for animals in movies that I think is developing, to the benefit of cinema as a whole. I’m thinking of The Banshees of Inishiren, which prominently features a dog, but finds many ways to tell you that the dog will be okay. That said, if you’re considering watching the movie and are sensitive to animal plotlines, still check Does the Dog Die.