With a name like Cocaine Bear, you might think you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. Well, guess what? You probably do. Cocaine Bear is an hour-and-a-half of a black bear on a rampage looking for cocaine, brutally murdering any people who get in its way. Director Elizabeth Banks’ film is about as insane as you’d hope it would be, a film that embraces the absurdity of this concept and goes all-in, and a perfect example of giving the audience exactly what they want. And while at its base, Cocaine Bear is just a ridiculous idea that hits all the checkboxes you’d want a film called Cocaine Bear to mark off, it’s also a reminder of wonderful days of mid-budget comedies, where studios would take a wild chance on something absolutely unhinged just to see if it might take off with audiences.

Cocaine Bear starts as this story of course has to start: with cocaine. Loosely based on real events, Cocaine Bear beings with Andrew C. Thorton II (Matthew Rhys), a drug smuggler who is throwing duffel bag after duffel bag full of cocaine out of a plane. After taking a sample for himself, Thorton hits his head, falls out of the plane, dies, and leaves several bags of cocaine scattered in unknown locations. Cut to the ground the next day, and some of the cocaine has fallen into a park in Chattahoochee, where it was found by a black bear, who then also finds a pair of hikers (Kristofer Hivju and Hannah Hoekstra) and proceeds to attack them in a drug-fueled rage.

Cocaine Bear soon becomes an ensemble piece of characters searching for the cocaine, or characters who just accidentally get caught in the middle of a bear and its newfound love for cocaine. Sari (Keri Russell) is a mom who gets caught on the aptly titled Blood Mountain while looking for her daughter (Brooklynn Prince), who has skipped school to go to a nearby waterfall with her friend Henry (Christian Convery). Syd Dentwood (Ray Liotta) is the drug dealer behind the failed drop, who sends his associate Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Syd’s own son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) to recover the missing cocaine. There’s also Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a cop who thinks he’s tracked down the drugs and the culprits and heads to the park to find both, and Liz (Margot Martindale), a park ranger who just wants to impress and flirt with her an inspector (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and get rid of a trio of troublesome kids causing problems in the park.