COCAINE BEAR (2023) (4K Ultra HD Review)

COCAINE BEAR (2023)

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital

Label: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes 21 Seconds
Audio: English Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD MA 7.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p UHD Widescreen (2.39:1).
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Cast: Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., with Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta

Drugged-up animal attack comedy Cocaine Bear (2023), directed by Elizabeth Banks (Brightburn), is inspired by the true story of a drug-run gone bad that resulted in a black bear eating a brick of cocaine back in 1985. This black comedy thriller might be inspired by reality but it mostly just takes the fun exploitative idea of a bear on cocaine and then runs with it for comedic, unrealistic, and oftentimes surprisingly gory effect. After a dipshit drug-runner unloads duffel bags full of nose candy by plane over the picturesque Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest in Georgia, before accidentally knocks himself unconscious and falls to his death on the streets below. Meanwhile, in the nearby forest a unwitting black bear devours some of the stash and develops a coke-habit and seeks out the remaining stash - the bear's drug-addled blood-lust threatens anyone in the immediate vicinity.

We have several disparate oddball groups converging on the forest, all of whom end-up encountering the bear; we have pistol-packin' Park Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale, Walk Hard), her wildlife activist crush Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a single-mom nurse Sari (Keri Russell, Waitress) who enters the forest in search of her school-skipping daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince, The Turning) and her best-friend Henry (Christian Convery, Sweet Tooth), and low-level thugs Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr., Straight Outta Compton) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich, B'Twixt Now and Sunrise), who work for local drug kingpin Syd (the late-great Ray Liotta, Goodfellas in full-on fun, asshole mode) to recover it before his South American cartel connections come looking for their cash. Also caught up in it are a trio of mischievous teen hooligans, Stache (Aaron Holliday, Euphoria), Vest (J.B. Moore), and Ponytail (Leo Hanna), a vacationing Norwegian couple Olaf (Kristofer Hivju, Game of Thrones) and Elsa (Hannah Hoekstra, Charlie's Angels), plus a pair of EMTs (comedian Scott Seiss & Kahyun Kim (American Gods) who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and big city cop Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr., Red Hook Summer).

The fun flick delivers on exactly what I suspected of a movie titled Cocaine Bear would; we get a black comedy with a 500-pound apex predator devouring a bunch of cocaine and embarking on a coke-fueled rampage. The comedy is silly, the characters are one-dimensional, and the bear-attack scenes are surprisingly terrifying, way beyond what I had expected, but also funny. We have dismemberments galore, decapitations, kids doing cocaine, disembowelments, bathroom fights, and plenty of physical gags - a lot of it done with old school practical gore FX, which I certainly appreciated. The bear itself is a digital creation and doesn't look great - even less so on the 4K UHD version, but it's good enough to go along with. 

I don't really have anything negative to offer here, other than to say some might find the tonal shifts off-putting (I did not), and the aforementioned digital bear is a bit uncanny. I saw it at the cinema with my wife (who is not a horror fan by any stretch) and she enjoyed it quite a bit, even though she cringed quite a bit at the gore, while I sat beside her squealing with glee. On the whole this delivered exactly what I was looking for - a purely escapist slice of drug-fueled animal-attack lunacy, and boy-howdy did it deliver the demented goods. I haven't been following Elizabeth Banks' directing career super closely, though I enjoy her as an actress in stuff like Wet Hot American Summer, Slither and Brightburn, but I had no idea she directed both the Charlie's Angels reboot and Pitch Perfect 2 (neither of which I have seen as they're not quite by cup of tea either), but after seeing this I definitely will keep an eye out for what she does next, to make something like this she definitely has some cool-cred in my book going forward.


Audio/Video: Cocaine Bear (2023) arrives on 4K UHD from UPHE in 2160p UHD Widescreen (2.39:1) and it looks pretty great. The UHD is a very nice upgrade over the 1080p in all the expected areas, having been digitally shot and coming from a 4K Digital Intermediate the images are free of any sort of blemish, it's crisp with pleasing depth and clarity, the colors of the forest scenes and bloody bear carnage are vivid. The 4K resolution isn't that much of an upgrade over the HD to be honest, but the Wide Color Gamut HDR10 color-grading certainly is a noticeable upgrade with superior black levels and shadow detail that the Blu-ray cannot compete with, especially during the opening and final scenes which takes place in very dimly lit conditions. The contrast also greatly benefits from the HDR10, which also infuses primaries with a bit more color depth and saturation. 

Audio comes by way of an English Dolby Atmos (on the UHD) upgrade, plus the previously existing DTS-HD MA 7.1 (on the Blu-ray) with optional English subtitles. Like the visuals the audio presentation is tight with solid depth and range, the low-end kicks in during the ferocious drug-addled bear attacks and the gunfire has a nice snap to it, plus the 80's soundtrack featuring Commodores, Berlin, Depeche Mode, Slim Whitman, Grandmaster Nelle Mel and Jefferson Starship sounds terrific, as does the score from Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame!

The animal attack flick gets a cool assortment of extras as well, the UHD carrying over all the previous 'Maximum Rampage Edition' Blu-ray extras are ported over here on the 4K UHD disc as well as the accompanying Blu-ray. These include the Audio Commentary with Director/Producer Elizabeth Banks and Producer Max Handelman. Then into a not so great Alternate Ending that runs 48 seconds., 5-minutes of Deleted & Extended Scenes that are fun to have included but were trimmed/deleted for good reason, plus we get a fun 2-min Gag Reel of some shenanigans on set.

All Roads Lead to Cokey: The Making of COCAINE BEAR is a 9-min EPK-style making of with the cast and crew, while the 8-min UnBEARable Bloodbath: Dissecting the Kills offers a bears-eye view of the creation of the kill scenes, while the 4-min Doing Lines features the cast and filmmakers reading lines from the script, which is more fun that it sounds.

The 2-disc 4K UHD+ Blu-ray arrives in a black keepcase with a single-sided sleeve featuring the key artwork, the same as the previous Blu-ray release. Inside there's a Movies Anywhere redemption code for a digital copy of the film. Notably, this does not include a slipcover as the Blu-ray edition did, you might want to hang onto it and repurpose it for the UHD if you care about such things. 

Special Features:
- Alternate Ending (48 sec)
- Deleted & Extended Scenes (5 min)
- Gag Reel (2 min)
- All Roads Lead to Cokey: The Making of COCAINE BEAR - Meet the hilarious ensemble brought together to bring the movie of what is soon to be the world's most famous bear to life (9 min)
- UnBEARable Bloodbath: Dissecting the Kills - From rigging to special effects makeup, to some of the actors doing their own stunts, we'll get a bears-eye view into some of COCAINE BEAR's hilarious and gory kill scenes (8 min)
- Doing Lines - Cast and filmmakers read lines from the script to COCAINE BEAR, which was a work of art unto itself (4 min)
- Audio Commentary with Director/Producer Elizabeth Banks and Producer Max Handelman

Those of you who bought the Blu-ray just five short months ago, when this 4K UHD was not even announced, are probably pretty irked about the timing of this release, and I feel you frustration my physical media loving friends - this current trend of staggered format releases is truly a terrible thing, we've seen it from Universal and others studios with Malignant, Violent Night and others, just to name a few. The optimist in me wants to think that they're testing the waters to see if the title sells well on Blu before they commit to UHD, but the cynic in me says they're just roping us genre fans into a double-dip, but either way you slice it I think the effect is a general mistrust, rightfully so, from consumers. Every time a new Blu-ray only title gets released it will make me second guess it, like, should I just wait for the eventual 4K? It's a bad faith way of doing business in my opinion, we need both formats to be released simultaneously. Glad to have this on 4K UHD, not so happy about the staggered format release. 

Screenshots from the UPHE Blu-ray:

Extras: