Tag Archives: horror movie

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.

—END—

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 MUMMY (2017) – Messy Movie Mired by Ridiculous Superhero Concept

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mummy poster

Some talented writers worked on THE MUMMY (2017).

David Koepp who co-wrote the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005) and years ago co-wrote JURASSIC PARK (1993), and Christopher McQuarrie who co-wrote EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014) and JACK REACHER (2012), two rare instances of Tom Cruise movies that I really liked, both worked on the screenplay to THE MUMMY, as well as Dylan Kussman.

Which just goes to show you that talent alone isn’t enough to save a concept that is flat-out dumb.

With THE MUMMY, Universal has launched their “Dark Universe” series, an attempt to reimagine their monster movies of yesteryear as a sort of Marvel superhero spinoff.

This is a huge mistake.  Someone needs to shut this concept down yesterday.

The idea of re-booting these classic Universal monster movies as superhero action flicks is an insult to the original films.  If you are going to remake them, they need to be remade as horror movies, plain and simple.

THE MUMMY (2017) is a disaster from start to finish.  I can only hope that this becomes a lost film.

THE MUMMY opens— no, not in Egypt— but in England in 1127 at the burial site of a bunch of crusader knights, who among other things, brought back with them Egyptian artifacts.  Jump ahead to present day and a construction crew building a new subway system under the streets of London happens upon the burial site.

The operation is shut down when Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) shows up with his top secret team of agents, the Dark Universe’s answer to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., to confiscate a key artifact, a dagger, which ties into an Egyptian Mummy named Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) whose back story we learn about through flashbacks and a voice over narration by Dr. Jekyll.

And then we finally get to the opening credits.  Talk about a rambling disjointed way to open a movie.

Next up we finally meet our dashing hero, Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) who along with his buddy Chris (Jake Johnson) are working for Dr. Henry Jekyll in search of Egyptian treasure in— no, not in Egypt— that would make too much sense, setting a movie about an Egyptian Mummy in Egypt– but in Iraq because Ahmanet was so dangerous that she had to be buried miles away from her homeland.

Nick is joined by the beautiful Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) who also works for Dr. Jekyll, and the two of them lead the way— when they’re not playfully bickering and bantering— in returning the mummified Ahaanet back to England.

But you can’t keep a good mummy down.  Ahmanet comes back to life, and the rest of the movie it’s Tom Cruise vs. a mummy in an action-packed tale that is about as believable and compelling as a Pokemon cartoon.

There is so much wrong with THE MUMMY I don’t know where to begin.

The biggest issue of course is this whole concept of the Dark Universe, the idea that the Universal monster movies should be rebooted as a superhero franchise. This idea is a disaster, just like this movie.

For starters, the concept itself is flawed.  Monsters are monsters, they’re not comic book superheroes.  So, even before the films come out, the powers that be are fighting an uphill battle, trying to tell a story that isn’t naturally there.  Let’s re-imagine THE MUMMY as an action movie.  No, it’s a horror movie.

Secondly, this style is clearly borrowed from the Marvel movies, and as such, comes off as derivative and unoriginal, a bad combination, to be sure.

A lot of people never accepted the Brendan Fraser re-boot of THE MUMMY (1999) but I’ve always enjoyed that one, as I thought its script was a good one, even if it played more like an INDIANA JONES movie than a horror movie.  That being said, the 1999 MUMMY wasn’t devoid of horror elements, and the mummy in that film  played by Arnold Vosloo had some screen presence.  Anyway, whatever you feel about the 1999 MUMMY, I liked that one better than this movie.

And it’s interesting to note that even though Tom Cruise is playing a character described in the movie as a “young man,” he’s six years older than Brendan Fraser who played the young dashing hero in the 1999 film.

Also of note, this whole idea of a MUMMY film being more of a dashing adventure than a horror film is not without historical precedent.  The second Universal MUMMY movie, THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940) which introduced Kharis the Mummy (played by Tom Tyler here and in subsequent movies by Lon Chaney Jr.) to movie audiences, had a quick-witted script which featured two American archeologists Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) who traded barbs and one-liners throughout.  The script, when not featuring the Mummy, was light and fun.  But it wasn’t an action movie, nor even a comedy.  It was a horror movie.

Even more out-of-place in THE MUMMY than the concept of turning a horror movie into an action movie is Tom Cruise.  With the exception of a handful of films, I am not a fan of Cruise’s movies.  I’ve been tired of his shtick of playing himself for years now, going all the way back to the 1980s.  Cruise’s presence here doesn’t do the movie any favors.  Not that it would have saved this movie, but a younger more dynamic actor would have made things a bit better.

I did enjoy Annabelle Wallis as Jenny Halsey.  In fact, hers was probably the only performance in the movie that I felt was worth watching, but the role itself was not that exciting.

Russell Crowe is forced to utter the worst lines in the movie as Dr. Jekyll.  His voice-over narration at the end of the film is so bad it sounds like an off-the-cuff ad lib about good vs. evil.  He gets to say such nonsense as “which side will win— we just don’t know.  He might be a hero.  He might be evil.”  This might be a real script.

And as the Mummy, Ahmanet, Sofia Boutella just isn’t given enough to do to have any relevant impact.  Compared to the original mummy in THE MUMMY (1932), Im-Ho-Tep, played by Boris Karloff, who had to endure mummification, resurrection, and ultimately rejection all in an effort to reclaim his one true love, Ahmanet is a villain who seems only to be obsessed with power, but even that interpretation is a stretch since her character simply isn’t developed.  Boutella was much more memorable as Jaylah in STAR TREK BEYOND (2016).

Jake Johnson is supposed to be providing comic relief as Cruise’s buddy Chris, but his character’s plight is an in-your-face rip-off of Griffin Dunne’s character from AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981).  Dunne’s role was hilarious and original.  Johnson’s character here is neither.

Director Alex Kurtzman works hard on the action scenes, but they’re not enough to save this movie.

The screenplay doesn’t work either, and at the end of the day, THE MUMMY fails because the idea behind it is so very flawed.

Here’s hoping it’s lights out for the Dark Universe.

—END—

Books by Michael Arruda:

TIME FRAME,  science fiction novel by Michael Arruda.  

Ebook version:  $2.99. Available at http://www.neconebooks.com. Print version:  $18.00.  Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT, movie review collection by Michael Arruda.

InTheSpooklight_NewText

 Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.neconebooks.com.  Print version:  $18.00.  Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.

FOR THE LOVE OF HORROR, short story collection by Michael Arruda.  

For The Love Of Horror cover

Ebook version:  $4.99.  Available at http://www.neconebooks.com. Print version:  $18.00.  Email your order request to mjarruda33@gmail.com. Also available at Amazon.com.