Tag Archives: horror comedy

COCAINE BEAR (2023) – Campy Horror Comedy A Dud

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Killer bear movies are a thing.

Probably the most famous is GRIZZLY (1976), which in spite of being a complete rip-off of JAWS (1975), is a highly entertaining and gory killer bear on the loose horror movie, and it made a killing at the box office back in the day. Before that you had NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY (1966), a well-made western about a family trying to protect its farm from a marauding bear, and there have been many others over the years, films like INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE (2015) which tried and failed to be a more contemporary killer bear horror movie.

Now comes COCAINE BEAR (2023), which is loosely based on a true story from 1985, when bags of cocaine were dropped from a plane by a drug dealer who died when his parachute didn’t open, and the cocaine which landed in the forest was ingested by a black bear. This movie is very loosely based on that story, as in real life the black bear promptly died, which is what you would expect to happen to an animal after overdosing on massive amounts of cocaine. Here, the film imagines what the bear would have done had it not died, which is, go on a murderous rampage.

The movie follows a set of quirky characters as they converge in the Georgia forest and have to contend with the cocaine bear.

Two children, Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) and Henry (Christian Convery) skip school and decide to spend the day in the forest. Dee Dee’s mom, Sari (Keri Russell) goes into the forest in search of the children. Drug dealer Syd (Ray Liotta, in his final film role) sends his son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), who’s still grieving over the death of his wife, and fellow drug dealer Daveed (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) into the woods to retrieve the cocaine. A cop named Bob (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) is also in the woods searching for the drugs, and then there’s a forest ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) who is more interested in her boss Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) than helping Sari find her daughter and her friend. There are more characters as well, and they all have one thing in common: the cocaine bear!

COCAINE BEAR, as its title suggests, has all the makings of campy comedic horror classic, and that’s what I hoped this one would be.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Try as it might, COCAINE BEAR isn’t much of a black comedy. It works a bit better as a horror movie, because there are some gruesomely gory bear attack sequences, but the rest of the film isn’t serious enough for it to work completely on this level, and it doesn’t work as a comedy either because the humor isn’t even close to being sharp.

The screenplay by Jimmy Warden fails to bring any of the wide array of characters to life. They’re not well-written, we know little about them, nor is the dialogue memorable. Most of the characters are caricatures of characters we’ve seen in other movies, the generic drug dealers, a mom searching for her daughter, precocious children, etc.

Elizabeth Banks’ meandering direction doesn’t help. COCAINE BEAR has very little pacing and no momentum. Rather than building to a climax, the story just moves from one bear incident to another. Characters come and go and have their encounters with the bear, but the film doesn’t build on any of it. There’s also not a likable character in the entire movie because the characters we are supposed to like are not fleshed out, and the characters we could love to hate are dull.

Jimmy Warden also wrote the screenplay to the horror sequel BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN (2020), which I thought was pretty dreadful. COCAINE BEAR is equally as dreadful.

Elizabeth Banks, whose work as an actress I enjoy, also directed the reboot CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2019), which most people hated, but I actually enjoyed. Banks’ work here with COCAINE BEAR is a mixed bag. The bear sequences are intense and scary, while the rest of the movie which was aiming for dark comedy misses its mark by a long shot.

The cast is also a combo of hits and misses.

Young Brooklyn Prince who was amazing in THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017), doesn’t get to do a whole lot here as Dee Dee other than be scared. Christian Convery fares better as Dee Dee’s friend Henry. He is able to inject a lot of personality into the role and has some of the better lines in the film, which he handles very well.

Keri Russell as mommy Sari plays things straight and as such makes very little impact here, even with her heroic stand at the end. Alden Ehrenreich, who played Han Solo in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018), makes drug dealer Eddie a sympathetic character, but he’s also a rather dull sympathetic character. O’Shea Jackson Jr. makes more of an impact as Eddie’s buddy and fellow drug dealer, Daveed. The scene where he’s jumped by three teens in a restroom is one of the more entertaining scenes in the movie.

Isiah Whitlock, Jr. has a thankless role as Bob the policeman, in a case where he is simply let down by the writing.

The same can be said for Ray Liotta as drug dealer and main villain in the movie, Syd. It’s a terribly written role, and it’s kinda too bad that this was Liotta’s final movie role. He died a week after completing work on this movie, in May 2022.

There are other quirky characters here as well, but none of them are developed. They show up for one sequence with the bear, and that’s pretty much it. Some of these sequences include a tense standoff inside the ranger’s cabin, a scene where the bear actually chases an ambulance, and a sequence where characters climb trees to escape the bear which doesn’t end well. All of these sequences have their moments, but none of them work as well as they could.

The bear itself is pretty frightening looking for a CGI creation, and the fact that it moves so quickly also helps make it scary. Interestingly, the killer bear movies I mentioned above were all about grizzly bears, while COCAINE BEAR is about a black bear, which traditionally does not attack humans, but this one does, because it’s high on cocaine.

I thought I was going to have a fun time watching COCAINE BEAR, but that simply wasn’t the case.

There’s certainly a story here to be told, an imaginative one about what might happen if a bear high on cocaine didn’t die and went on a crazy killing spree in the forest…

But sadly, COCAINE BEAR isn’t it.

I give it one and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE DEAD DON’T DIE (2019) – Understated Satire Just Happens to Have Zombies In It

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THE DEAD DON'T DIE

Some day, perhaps, THE DEAD DON’T DIE (2019) might be remembered as a masterpiece of understated humor and satire.

Alas, today is not that day.

THE DEAD DON’T DIE is a new horror comedy starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver that is being marketed as a zombie comedy, but you know what? It’s not really a zombie movie. Oh, there are zombies in it, but it’s the most non-zombie zombie movie I’ve ever seen, which is not going to make it a hit among horror fans.

In fact I’d wager to guess that most horror fans will not like this movie. Even though it mentions George Romero and throws in a few Easter eggs here and there, it largely ignores the zombie films which have come before it. Sometimes this can be a good thing, but in this case it is not.

Heck, since its comedy really isn’t all that biting— heh, heh!— comedy fans aren’t going to be too keen on this one either. Yup, I’m going to go out on a—limb— and predict that this one will not perform all that well at the box office.

That being said, THE DEAD DON’T DIE is not an awful film. I actually liked it, in a weird offbeat sort of way, and that’s because at the end of the day THE DEAD DON’T DIE is satire, that just happens to have zombies in it. It’s the type of comedy that Bob Newhart would have made in his heyday, with Murray filling in here for the Newhart role. It has a few pointed things to say about our present day society, but the writing is never as sharp, and the direction never as tight as a movie like this needs it to be. Even when the film breaks the fourth wall, the humor still struggles. Yet, there are places where it works and works well.

In THE DEAD DON’T DIE, Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray) and his fellow officers Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver) and Mindy Morrison (Chloe Sevigny) usually have nothing more urgent to do in their small town of Centerville than ask their local Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) whether or not he stole chickens from the annoying farmer Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi). But suddenly things grow strange.

The daylight lasts longer than usual, watches and cell phones stop working, and soon the dead start to rise and begin eating the townspeople. The culprit? The controversial use of global fracking has affected the earth’s rotation, and as a result all these freaky things start happening. Supposedly. The people aren’t sure, because the government cites global fracking as safe and accuses scientists of spreading false information. Sound familiar?

How Robertson and his fellow officers react to these horrific happenings is the story told in THE DEAD DON’T DIE. Trouble is, the biggest way they react is by standing around and doing nothing. So much for compelling storytelling!

THE DEAD DON’T DIE was written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, a director known for his deadpan style. Jarmusch is tenacious here with his slow-moving satire, which might be the film’s greatest asset, that it never deviates from its slow pace, its unassuming humor, and its coy messages on society.

The satire in THE DEAD DON’T DIE is there. It’s just not always all that clear. For instance, Steve Buscemi’s Farmer Frank wears a red cap which reads “Keep America White Again,” a slogan which in itself satirizes the modern-day message of the Trump presidency as well as poking fun at the overall intelligence of his followers with its grammatically incorrect slogan. It appears ever so briefly and is easily missed. Yet it got a good chuckle from the audience.

Speaking of which, I saw THE DEAD DON’T DIE in a full theater in which the majority in the audience were college-aged folks. It was a lively audience that was laughing and having fun even before the movie started. And they were generous with their laughter throughout the movie, laughing much more than I did.

As mentioned, the film breaks the fourth wall on more than one occasion, sequences where Murray and Driver discuss the theme song and even the script. But it’s not the type of lively screenplay that is filled with playful asides a la the works of Woody Allen or Mel Brooks. In fact, there is very little that is lively about the entire movie. There’s about as much energy surrounding this flick as a heavy-duty afternoon nap.

There are also some fun little in-jokes, like Adam Driver carrying a STAR WARS key chain, a direct nod to his role in the new STAR WARS trilogy.

A lot of the humor doesn’t work. The running gag about the theme song wasn’t funny at the beginning and it’s even less funny by the end.

There’s a GREAT GATSBY gaffe that I’m still not sure I understand. A character mentions she loves the name Zelda because of Zelda Fitzgerald, who she says was Jay Gatsby’s wife in THE GREAT GATSBY, but Gatsby wasn’t married, and his love interest in the novel was Daisy Buchanan. Zelda Fitzgerald was the wife of Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s possible I’m missing something here, but since what I’m missing isn’t obvious, such a gaffe just comes off as lazy writing.

Speaking of lazy, there’s a heck of a lot of inaction going on here. Characters stand around and talk, and talk, and talk. There’s one sequence after the first zombie kill in the diner when Chief Robertson discovers the bodies, that features as its gag people saying the same lines when they see the bodies for this first time. Admittedly, this is funny, but it takes place during a sequence where we have to watch each character drive up to the diner, casually take their time entering and exiting before saying the aforementioned line. S-l-o-w.

There are a lot of satirical moments poking fun at today’s society, and most of these work, although they are exceedingly understated.

The horror elements are also downplayed here, and while there are some gory sequences, this one doesn’t really hold its own as a horror movie. There are also scenes of dialogue where the characters in a panic go on about the zombie epidemic, and they go on at lengths which aren’t supported by events in the movie. There’s basically one zombie scene before the film’s third and final act.

There’s also an annoying way the zombie’s die, as when they are killed they give off a puff of smoke. What is this, TWILIGHT?

THE DEAD DON’T DIE does have a terrific cast, which is one of its strengths, and they all play quirky characters.

Bill Murray is fine as Chief Robertson. He certainly has been funnier in his career, but he handles the deadpan humor well, again channeling a Bob Newhart vibe. There’s also an in-joke when his character breaks the fourth wall and asks Adam Driver if they are simply improvising here, since Murray began his career with improv, and is known to have improvised in some of his movies. Then again, maybe it simply means that Murray and Driver weren’t working with a script!

Adam Driver also nails the deadpan humor as Officer Peterson. I increasingly enjoy Driver in the movies, and while his biggest role to date has been the conflicted villain Kylo Ren in the new STAR WARS trilogy, I’ve enjoyed him more in such films as BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018) and LOGAN LUCKY (2017). He was probably my favorite part of THE DEAD DON’T DIE, and he certainly got the most laughs, but he also didn’t have to try very hard. The audience laughed when he showed up at a crime scene driving a miniscule car.

Chloe Sevigny is very good as Officer Morrison, and Tilda Swinton has the most unusual role as local mortician Zelda Winston, who’s an eccentric character whose idiosyncracies sometimes generate laughter and other times misfire. She’s the one character in the film who is a badass zombie killer, which provide Swinton with her best moments in the movie.

Steve Buscemi is on hand as the irritable farmer Frank, and he has a couple of comic moments, but for a guy like Buscemi, that’s less than you expect. The cast also includes Danny Glover, Selena Gomez, Caleb Landry Jones, and Tom Waits as Hermit Bob.

Hermit Bob’s line at the end of the film that we live in a crazy world kinda sums up the point of the film, that this world is a crazy place, and that zombies rising from the dead isn’t any nuttier than things we are already seeing.

As I said, one day this film may be remembered as a classic satire. But today, alas, due to its incredibly slow and lethargic pace and less than sharp writing, it’s going down in my book as a well-intentioned look at the crazy world in which we live that lacked the necessary energy and oomph to successfully make its case.

It also doesn’t help itself in that it’s not much of a zombie movie, a fact that most likely will keep its potential fan base away from the theater.

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