Editorials
Before ‘Cocaine Bear’: Five of the Most Horrifying Bear Attack Movie Moments
Cocaine Bear is being unleashed in movie theaters this weekend and we’re all very excited. Who doesn’t want to see a killer bear do hardcore drugs and go on a murderous rampage? It’s the Catalina Wine Mixer of all movie synopses! Entertainment feels guaranteed, but it doesn’t appear as though Cocaine Bear is aiming to scare us silly with its killer bear.
Leave that to the bear attacks in these other movies…
THE REVENANT
Leonardo DiCaprio goes from “Oh, hey. A bear” to “I am currently being ripped apart by a bear” faster than Blumhouse could greenlight a M3GAN sequel.
The moment DiCaprio’s character, Hugh Glass, spots the mama bear’s cubs it’s already over. She barrels toward him and open paw smacks him into a tree like it was a turnbuckle at WrestleMania In the Woods (I’d watch it) then begins ripping flesh off his body with every effortless movement. She then drools a little on his face for just that extra little smidge of disrespect before nosing around his body and private parts. Hilariously, the stunt man using motion capture to play the bear actually had to put his head in Leonardo DiCaprio’s butt during the scene. Glenn Ennis told Global News, “My face was in Leo’s butt for a fair bit of time. I can see how that’s someone’s fantasy, but it wasn’t mine!”
The bear leaves him alone for a minute and nonchalantly ho-hums over to her cubs as if to say “Hey, you should check this out I’m about to eat this dude’s soul!” before Glass is able to take a shot at her with his rifle. This does about as much good as trying to mow your backyard with a fork. The bear with one quick credit card swipe slashes his throat with her claw. When Glass protests by lifting an arm, she tears it apart and removes his (checks notes) entire shoulder.
The bear (who is clearly a smoker) needs another break before the final lunge where Glass is able to stab it in the neck multiple times. The two roll down a hill where as luck would have it the bear, who is the size of a Jeep Liberty, rolls right on top of him. He miraculously survives but the injuries are so extensive the movie has to last two hours and thirty six minutes for him to adequately recover.
This is undoubtedly the most technically sound and awe inspiring bear attack of all. They used CGI and motion capture but you’ve got to do some squinting to tell it’s not real.
ANNIHILATION
Look, there’s more to unpack in this scene than a U-Haul fresh from the set of a Hoarders episode so let’s just focus on the bear attack itself. Three women tied to a chair (one of them Natalie Portman) are being interrogated in a mysterious “Upside Down” type place called “The Shimmer.” Their interrogator hears a friend screaming for help outside and goes to rescue her. Except it is not her friend. It is this “mutated” bear with no flesh on its skull that screams and speaks in the human wails of its victims.
The bear is an abomination against all that is holy, righteous and good in this world and I’m not talking about in the movie. I’m talking about even in fiction. Complete with a mixture of both human and bear teeth, a human skull embedded on the side of its face and a growl that sounds like the kid from The Babadook was given steroids derived from the veins of Satan himself after a three day coke bender.
It screams its human/demon-like scream so close to their helpless faces that if he has pink eye they are definitely getting it. It even puts some of their body parts in its mouth. Just to taunt them. This thing will have you sitting on and not in your seat. The unholy monster rips off part of a victim’s neck and most of her entire jaw in a moment so grotesque and evil you barely notice its mostly computer generated. This was too gnarly a moment for even CGI to tame.
After a very large machine gun is fired into its hairless double demon skull ear hole, it lets out one last human screech to haunt your dreams. This one probably didn’t go to mutant bear heaven.
BACKCOUNTRY
This 2014 film, based loosely (are they ever based tightly?) on a true story, spends the first hour of its running time dealing with the relationship struggles of an urban couple out hiking in the woods. Then Sting drops down from the rafters and puts a scorpion death drop on your soul.
The couple are inside the tent doing adult Valentine’s Day stuff to each other when they hear twigs breaking outside. They check it out and think they scared off whatever it was and go back in the tent. They wake up the next morning and unzip the tent to see a gigantic bear being all cute and laying outside the tent just waiting for them to wake up so he can snuggle (murder) them.
What follows is so realistic and intense that I’ve only seen it once when the film came out and had to actually mentally prepare myself before watching it again.
They decide to hide in the tent quietly and the bear taunts them. Poking around the outside of the tent before sticking his head in the entrance and literally screaming at them. They are trapped with nowhere to go and no breath mints when the bear starts to claw at them. He rips Jenn’s arm open like a bag of Twizzlers and then starts on Alex, gnawing at his leg and ripping most of the meat off from the shin down. Jenn grabs a bottle of pepper spray which would have been very useful TWO MINUTES AGO and sprays the bear who mercifully runs off. They are safe for the moment and we can all calm down until BAHGOD THAT’S SMOKEY THE BEAR’S MUSIC! The bear comes back with a vengeance moments later and drags Alex out of the tent.
We can now hear the bear ruthlessly attacking and eating Alex but thankfully they spare us from seeing it. Until they don’t. The practical FX work on Alex getting his face torn off is some of the best I’ve ever seen. If you watch closely and maybe even pause it at the right time, you can see some pretty intense stuff. What? You know you’re going to. Don’t judge.
THE EDGE
In The Edge, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins and Harold Perrineau’s characters are involved in a plane crash and stranded in the woods of Alaska with a very smart and pissed off bear hunting them down. The greatest bear attack film of all time, The Edge carries with it an amazing script and intriguing subplots but we’re gathered here today to talk about bears eating some folks. So, let’s get down to business.
The smell of blood is in the air after Stephen (Perrineau) badly injures himself in the most enraging way possible (he survives a plane crash only to stab his own leg trying to make a spear).
Later that evening, Stephen sits bleeding during a spooky night-time storm and sees something up ahead in the darkness. He leans over to get a closer look when a gigantic grizzly heaving towards him comes into focus. The bear (a real-life trained bear named Bart) reaches him instantly, leans around his body and growls in his face as a little extra “fuck you, buddy”; then the bear picks him up by the leg, dangling him in front of his friends. The bear then toys with and destroys him as his friends watch helplessly.
You know it’s over when, with one creepily playful bite-down and pull-back movement, Stephen’s awful screams instantly stop. The silence is deafening.
PROPHECY
The hazardous environmental waste of a paper mill causes some of the local wilderness to mutate – including, of course, a huge bear. Maggie (Talia Shire) and a camp of others come across some mutant bear cubs (which are not cute in case you’re wondering). The mama mutant bear then shows up at the camp like Patrick Bateman in his whitey-tighties wielding a chain-saw going absolutely berserker on the entire camp.
The ensuing pandemonium is a little hard to keep track of because of the wild editing but the bear/monster smacks down a few folks, causes a huge fire and then chases the survivors through the woods. This is all frightening because of the presentation of the monstrosity.
One side of her is just a good ole’ angry bear and the other a nasty, lumpy, bunch of goo, skin and various obscenities that you can never really get your eyes to settle on. What’s really frightening is the way the bear moves. Imagine the camera effect they used in Evil Dead for the Kandarian demon and the way it glides around. Now imagine it going backwards with a giant goo bear staring at you. It’s simply unnatural. Sure, the effects here are quite dated as the film was made in 1979 but it’s very impressive and creative for the time.
Cocaine Bear is in theaters February 24. May we all enjoy it as much as bears clearly enjoy us.
Director Sébastien Vaniček has been set to helm the next Evil Dead movie, and it’s easy to see why with his feature debut, the spider horror movie Infested. Playing like a cross between Attack the Block and Arachnophobia, Infested makes you care about its characters while delivering no shortage of skin-crawling spider horror moments.
Available now on Shudder, Infested follows Kaleb (Théo Christine), a lonely 30 year old who’s estranged from his best friend and at odds with his sister over their crumbling apartment. His dreams of opening a reptile zoo get drastically thwarted when he brings home an illegally acquired desert spider, one that happens to be gravid, and it gets loose. One hatched egg sac gives way to hundreds more, plunging the apartment building into a visceral arachnophobic nightmare.
It’s not just that Infested employs real spiders for many of the skin-crawling horror moments that make it so effective, though that certainly is a factor. Or in the way the spiders’ venom inflicts a painful, grotesque demise. It’s in the constant escalation of the horror and the way Vaniček captures the arachnids on screen. These eight-legged terrors may not exist in the real world, thankfully, but the movements look authentic enough to make you squirm. That authenticity, the high octane energy, and the constant rise and fall of palpable tension as the spiders skitter about and wreak devastation are enough to leave viewers curling into the fetal position.
While Infested offers no shortage of arachnophobia-inducing moments, from tiny shoebox origins to giant garage encounters, we’re counting down six of the most skin-crawling moments of spider terror. Warning: some plot and death spoilers ahead…
6. Shoe Babies
Poor Toumani (Ike Zacsongo). He finally gets a shiny new pair of coveted sneakers after wearing his to the point of falling apart, only to get bit by a spider when he tries them on. It’s a move straight out of Arachnophobia. Director Sébastien Vanicek draws out the tension in this unsettling scene; the audience knows there’s a spider somewhere in that box as Toumani struggles with the light switch (hell, foreshadowing) before finally giving up to test his new kicks on the stairwell. That his sweet canine companion is with him heightens the suspense as we wait for the metaphorical shoe to drop. Vanicek doesn’t give his audience a reprieve when Toumani smashes the culprit behind his bite, though. A second look inside the shoe reveals the spider had a host of small babies that skittered across Toumani and inflicted even more spider trauma.
5. Air Duct Infestation
Madame Zhao (Xing Xing Cheng) is introduced as the tough building custodian who tirelessly works to get the crumbling building in order, which is no easy task. That makes her one of the first to notice the infestation as she carefully picks up a smashed spider and arms herself with bug spray, and she notices telltale signs of webbing. Zhao uses caution when handling the carcass and even more when attempting to clear the vents with her spray. In a normal world, the pesky spider problem would’ve been handled or at least slowed until professionals could show up. But this isn’t a normal spider situation and the moment Zhao pokes her head up into the vent to check the aftermath, she’s face hugged by a venomous arachnid. Vanicek ensures this terrifying moment comes with maximum suspense. We know what’s going to happen, and that makes it all the more excruciating to watch.
4. Never Put Your Face in a Spider Hole
Vanicek paints a visceral picture of what happens when you put your face in a spider hole in the film’s opening sequence. That brutal lesson lingers as Infested unfurls one of the most intense spider invasions on film in a long while. Seeing the consequences of an illegal trapper getting face hugged in the intro makes what happens to Moussa (Mahamadou Sangaré) all the more skin-crawling. His attempt to squash a giant spider lurking on his bedroom wall creates a hold in the wall, and Vanicek again slows time to an unbearable degree to let Moussa discover the hard way why some dark crevices, holes, and hidden spaces are better left alone.
3. Prime Time TV Watching
When the infestation has fully taken root, and the dire situation has convinced the protagonists to finally flee, Kaleb insists they also attempt to save the long-term residents that were there for him and Manon (Lisa Nyarko) when their mom died. It heralds a harrowing montage that demonstrates the physical and emotional devastation the spiders are causing. Most unsettling of which highlights the fate of Claudia (Marie-Philomène Nga), a parental figure to the siblings. Kaleb and Mathys (Jérôme Niel) enter her dimly lit apartment and find her seated in front of the TV. Though she appears to be sleeping peacefully, Vanicek terrifies with the sudden burst of spiders from the back of Claudia’s head. A quick shot later reveals that Claudia was infested from the inside out, and the image is pure nightmare fuel.
2. Bathroom Attack
Lila (Sofia Lesaffre) is deeply arachnophobic, so she understandably freaks out when she spots a giant spider while she’s using the bathroom. She screams for her boyfriend, Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), to rescue her, who gallantly brings a glass to collect it. Of course, it doesn’t go well. Jordy eventually gives up and smashes it, scattering the babies on its back everywhere, just in time for dozens more to bubble up from the shower drain. Vanicek dials up the intensity of this scene from the start by showing the audience that there are far more spiders lurking about than an oblivious Lila knows. Keeping her in the dark lends unpredictability, but the anxious screaming from everyone, including nervous friends in the hall, only increases the stress of the unexpected attack. The constant misdirection and frenetic camerawork ensure this sequence gets your heart pumping out of fear.
1. Bad Timing in the Webbed Corridor
Early foreshadowing made it clear that the building’s broken timer on a crucial light switch would become a problem later. And boy does it. When the protagonists come upon it in their bid to escape, they find it now transformed into a webbed tunnel filled with an obscene amount of venomous spiders. The only path forward is through it, but the faulty timer leaves them vulnerable to death when the lights go out. Naturally, Vanicek wrings as much dread from this scenario as possible, leaving Manon (Lisa Nyarko) very nearly caught. The group hits a dead end, forcing them right back into the webbed corridor, which leads to one of the film’s most emotionally painful scenes. Everything about this particular hallway is a skin-crawling nightmare, from the close brushes with spider bites to the dizzying way Vanicek captures the sheer scale of the infestation within this hall alone.
Infested is now streaming on Shudder.
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