This might sound crazy, but even when the titular bear in “Cocaine Bear” was gnawing on faces and dragging victims into the woods and tossing aside leg stumps like they were discarded chicken wings at a sports bar, I kinda felt bad for the bear. It’s not her fault some dip-bleep drug smuggler tossed duffel bags of cocaine into the woods and turned the bear into an instant addict with a voracious appetite for coke and for anyone standing between the bear and the coke. Just as the shark in “Jaws” doesn’t know it’s a shark, the bear in “Cocaine Bear” doesn’t know it’s a cocaine bear. She’s a victim of circumstances.
All right, all right, so the bear is also a drooling, roaring, rampaging killing machine in Elizabeth Banks’ wildly entertaining and darkly hilarious B-movie blood-fest, which proves to be more than just a fantastically ridiculous title and a viral marketing campaign. This is a genuinely well-crafted horror gem with a winning cast, some nifty twists and a very good bear who betrays its CGI origins maybe 10% of the time but for the most part looks like an actual, cocaine-fueled black bear with lightning-quick reflexes, a big bite and an insatiable appetite for coke on the rocks. And in the trees. And on the cliffs.
