This post contains spoilers for "Cocaine Bear."
If you love slasher films and you also love bears, then boy are you gonna love "Cocaine Bear," playing in theaters now. The movie is exactly what the trailers promised it would be: a story about a bear who gets exposed to a lost shipment of cocaine, and then goes on a 90-minute killing spree in her quest to find more cocaine. As outlandish as it sounds, "Cocaine Bear" was actually inspired by a true story -- except the real cocaine bear died of a massive overdose instead of going on a rampage.
There's a lot of over-the-top violence and gore in this film, although maybe not as much in the first half as we might've wanted. Throughout the first third, "Cocaine Bear" has a tendency to cut away right as the bear attacks. At first it might seem as if this movie is scared to truly deliver on the over-the-top bloodshed we've been promised, but once it gets to the ambulance scene halfway through, it becomes clear that "Cocaine Bear" film has simply been biding its time.
The scene starts off with the introduction of two completely new characters -- paramedics Beth (Kahyun Kim) and Tom (Scott Seiss) -- as they walk into the cabin where the bear is hiding. They think they're coming in to help someone deal with a concussion, but they quickly discover they're in way over their heads. At first, the only living being they find in the cabin is a severely injured Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale), who tries to tell them about the bear, but is so badly hurt that she struggles to get the word out. By the time she does, it's too late.
That's One Crazy Bear
As if on cue, the moment Liz finally manages to say the word "bear," the bear knocks the door to the other room off its hinges, trapping Tom underneath it. Luckily for Tom, the bear is distracted from biting his head off by the sight of his medical bag nearby, which she suspects might have more cocaine in it. As the bear tries to open it with her paws, Beth straps Ranger Liz in a stretcher and quickly rolls her back to the ambulance. She drives away with the back door open as Tom jumps into it from behind, and for a moment it seems like all three of them will get to live another day. But Cocaine Bear has other plans.
Angrier than ever now that she's discovered the medical bag has no cocaine in it, the bear chases after the ambulance. Tom attempts to close the doors, but with the vehicle moving so fast and with Liz trying to shoot the bear from her stretcher, he's not able to in time. And so comes the already-famous shot of the bear jumping into the speeding ambulance.
The following sequence is absolutely gruesome, as the bear claws and bites its way through Tom's body, culminating in a truly gross shot of his almost-severed hand. Liz, trapped in the stretcher, gets thrown onto the road face-first, her skin getting scraped off by the asphalt. The final victim is Beth, who loses control of the car in the chaos and crashes into a tree. She goes flying out of the windshield and bounces off the tree at full speed, landing inches away from the camera with wide open, lifeless eyes. Rest in peace, Beth, Tom and Liz: none of you were very good at your jobs, but it's still sad to see you go.
The High Point Of The Film
Unfortunately, this insane ambulance scene is also "Cocaine Bear" at its most fun and entertaining, and the movie starts to run out of energy from there. It almost feels like this is the scene that inspired the whole movie, and once it's over "Cocaine Bear" isn't sure where else to go. There are still some great moments — mainly, the showdown between the detective and the drug dealers, which results in the bear getting its paws on even more cocaine — but throughout its final act, the movie seems to have exhausted itself on its own premise.
It's hard to complain too much, because it was with the ambulance scene that the movie delivered on everything it promised. It toed the line between comedy and horror, and allowed its three main actors to make the most of their limited time on screen. Scott Seiss, most famous for his "Angry Retail Guy" videos on TikTok, got to have one of the funniest moments in the film as he slowly, silently closes the door after he first discovers the bear in the other room. Esteemed character actress Margo Martindale also gets to deliver a standout performance as Liz, a character whose absurd incompetence makes her equally absurd death seem oddly fitting. Kahyun Kim also makes an impression as Beth, the only character in the scene who feels like she'd belong in a serious horror film, which only makes the craziness of her situation feel even more ridiculous.
"Cocaine Bear" might've have peaked a little too early for its own good, but at least it peaked with one of the most uniquely unhinged scenes we've seen in years.
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The post This Was By Far The Most Brutal Scene In Cocaine Bear appeared first on /Film.