I was mindlessly watching YouTube one day and another one of those dreadful ads came up. I had my thumb hovering over the countdown ready to press skip but this ad had caught my attention. This was something that I had never seen before.

A comedy-horror about a bear purely fueled by cocaine that goes on a killing rampage in a national park.

I thought to myself, “This is so ridiculous, seems so bad, but I have to watch it”. It never crossed my mind to buy tickets to the movies to see this monstrosity which is why I waited a couple of months before it became available on Prime Video, free to watch with a subscription.

So there I was on a random Friday night, about to watch maybe one of the most ridiculous, yet good movies that I have ever seen.

To start things off Cocaine Bear is loosely based on a true story of which a bear in Georgia eats an entire duffel bag of cocaine dropped out of Andrew Thronton’s plane during its crash. However, in real life, the bear overdosed very quickly and died mere hours after consuming it without killing a single person.

Going back to the movie, it is set in the 80s due to that being the time period in which the real event occurred and it pays tribute to crime and horror shows/movies at that time such as Miami Vice. 

I find this unique as it does a great job displaying it with the sets looking like an 80’s portal and the way the characters are dressed and the props they used are very similar to what would be used on an 80’s set show such as Stranger Things.

The movie displays the perspectives of all sorts of people such as drug dealers, national park rangers, and casual people who all eventually make their way to the national park in Georgia where they cross paths with the one and only Cocaine Bear.

I loved that aspect as it provided some sort of depth to the movie and helped provide a lot more of a story which I did not expect as when I watched the trailer it seemed very cheesy.

If you are looking for cheesy though, there is plenty of that still. It still offers those classic horror movie films that are so cheesy, that it is actually pretty funny. You’ll constantly be finding yourself trying to predict what happens next and how it will turn out which makes it a lot of fun watching it for the first time.

What’s also cheesy is the amount of gore that occurs. While the CGI and effects are very realistic, the gore is not by any means. The blood splatters that occur were obviously faked as if they shot Kool-Aid out of a hose and when there is a kill scene it looks like a bear is eating a mannequin. However, this was most likely the intent of the movie as it is a comedy and probably wasn’t a budget issue.

In terms of horror, this wasn’t necessarily a scary movie due to the sheer cheesiness of it. I personally get pretty scared easily and I can confidently say that this wasn’t all that bad. There were maybe one or two jumpscares but anything else was just kinda funny.

When it comes to actors I wasn’t very familiar with the cast other than Ray Liotta playing the head drug dealer however I’d say that the cast played their characters pretty well and made it pretty convincing that they were getting terrorized. I also liked the way they all started in different places at the beginning of the movie and eventually, all made their way to the exact same spot towards the end.

Overall I’d say that Cocaine Bear is a solid movie and definitely not what I expected whatsoever. If you’re ever in the mood to watch a “horror” movie and get a good laugh at it too this is definitely the movie to watch.