Warning: Spoilers for Cocaine Bear below!
Cocaine Bear has 2023's most over-the-top movie scene yet. Cocaine Bear is based on the real-life story of a black bear that devoured a large amount of missing cocaine in 1985, but that is where the movie's relationship with history ends. Unlike the real-life cocaine bear, which simply died from ingesting such large quantities of the drug, the bear seen in Cocaine Bear becomes an unstoppable killing machine slaughtering anyone unfortunate enough to be in its path.
With its hard R-rating, Cocaine Bear's 11 kill scenes are shockingly harsh, with many characters dying cartoonishly savage deaths. However, nothing else compares to the scene in which two paramedics, Beth (Kahyun Kim) and Tom (Scott Seiss), and Forest Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) come face-to-face with the bear when the paramedics respond to an attack at the forest station. Under the direction of Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear's ambulance chase is easily the standout sequence of the movie.
Cocaine Bear's Ambulance Sequence Is The Most Wild Scene Of The Year
As Beth and Tom attempt to flee in their ambulance along with the badly wounded Liz, the coked-up bear easily catches up to the ambulance, knocking the gurney-bound Liz out of the back door face-first, with Liz painfully skidding across the pavement. The bear then viciously mauls Tom, causing Beth to crash into a tree and propelling her out of the windshield to her death. Right away, Cocaine Bear's ambulance chase is by far 2023's most unforgettable movie scene yet.
While it is still February of 2023, Cocaine Bear's ambulance scene also sets the bar extremely high for any slasher or horror movie moments to outdo it in the coming months. The bear's ambulance attack is right out of an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon and not only flexes Cocaine Bear's horror-comedy muscles but also easily tops its closest competition for 2023.
Cocaine Bear's Ridiculous Kill Scenes Already Beat M3GAN's Iconic Rampage
As far as 2023's horror movie slate, Blumhouse's M3GAN started the year strong with its tale of an empathic, cybernetic doll who becomes a killer to protect her beloved child owner. M3GAN has its own standout slasher sequence of the titular M3GAN slashing her way through the lab she was created in and even taking the time to break-dance ahead of one of her kills. Despite this, Cocaine Bear's ambulance sequence has taken its throne as 2023's horror movie moment to beat.
As a horror-comedy loosely based on a true story, Cocaine Bear takes itself about as seriously as its title suggests. Cocaine Bear might have precious little to do with the facts of its story or the actual science of the effects of cocaine on a bear. That does not stop Cocaine Bear from making its eponymous wild animal into a new horror-comedy icon, especially with its wild ambulance sequence.