Two years ago, Cocaine Bear, Ray Liotta’s first posthumous role, was released (his final posthumous role, 1992, came out a few months ago). In our world, the actor died in his sleep while filming in the Dominican Republic; in Cocaine Bear, he was disemboweled by the titular bear. Why? I’m still not sure. Elizabeth Banks directed Cocaine Bear, her second film as director after 2019’s Charlie’s Angels; it was based on a true story—well, “inspired,” because the bear that ate the smuggled cocaine immediately died a painful death. He did not go on a killing spree. The premise of Cocaine Bear and the movie itself remain embarrassing reflections of our rotting present, both toothless and infected with something remarkably dark.
A bear that eats pounds of cocaine and turns murderous sounds appropriately “high concept” for a number of 1980s/1990s action producers, but even back then, the drug angle—and especially the title—would’ve turned many with money off. But now? It’s the maturation, or installation, of “Millennial Epic Bacon Humor” into mainstream pop culture—no wonder it’s not sticking. That whole concept—pulpy, misanthropic, afraid or unable to address the present—is of a piece with the rest of pop culture. In the absence of so much else, what does strike me in many new films is the appalling level of realistic violence and gore. I’m not talking about horror movies or crossover hits like The Substance; this is the ambient dread and hatred of films like It Ends With Us, Sound of Freedom, Death of a Unicorn, and Cocaine Bear.
Death of a Unicorn arrived in a month with next to no new movies out, yet Alex Scharfman’s directorial debut won’t tide anyone over until, what, oh, The Shrouds comes out at the end of this month. David Cronenberg’s latest, already nearly a year late from Cannes 2024—a far cry from 2022 when his Crimes of the Future played in multiplexes weeks after premiering on the Croisette—is the only new movie of any note coming out in the next several weeks. Otherwise, there’s The Friend, where Naomi Watts and Bill Murray take care of a gigantic dog. At the end of the trailer for that one, Watts muses that, “Maybe the emotional support dog isn’t an emotional support dog… maybe I’m the emotional support human.” This movie might’ve made some money in 2017, 2018. Not now. No one’s paying attention, they know it’s shit.
But people are still going to movie theaters. Look at A Minecraft Movie, the biggest blockbuster of the year so far, and totally inscrutable to anyone born in the 20th century. That’s okay: while this latest video game adaptation may not be the counterculture youth attack before-and-after moment of Bonnie and Clyde, it’s yet another instance of people in their late-20s and early-30s realizing they’ve aged into the side of life that isn’t hip, isn’t automatically cool, the side that certain companies cater to, and others ignore. The pop culture machine is ignoring you, it’s not malfunctioning. Movie theaters will be fine as long as movies like Minecraft are made.
So what’s with the blood and guts of so many new movies? It’s a reflection of the disillusionment of Americans with the mass media they grew up with and still, to varying degrees, identify with. Why else would people become violently angry over Ghostbusters and Star Wars and Snow White? The same impulse that drives adults to complain that Snow White has “gone woke” (give me a break) has also driven liberals and leftists into a grim nihilism of survival, the feeling that we’re all living in “the most dangerous game” without knowing who’s got the bow and arrow.
The violence of Death of a Unicorn and Cocaine Bear is similar to that of the early-1970s revisionist Westerns like Soldier Blue, Little Big Man, and The Hunting Party: buckets of blood, coiled intestines, extended death throes. What’s gone is the graceful death shot, one where an actor really gets to show their stuff and die on camera in closeup. Remember Leonardo DiCaprio in The Quick and the Dead? That kind of thing isn’t happening anymore. What you see are guts ripped out in wide shots, hollow eyes CGI’d in as computer avatars of movie stars are thrown around or incinerated or whatever it is they do in these grotesque attempts at popular films released today.
For real “movie violence,” look at George Roy Hill’s 1966 Hawaii: early on, a sailor is hit in the face with a swinging hook and knocked off of the sail and onto the ship. Today, that kind of accident would involve brutal face trauma, broken legs, maybe just a completely unfixable situation with a Jeff Goldbug Brundel-Fly misery writhing around on the deck. In 1966, he just got hit in the face and then he got up. Or, he got hit in the face and he died. In other words, more real than real, which is what movies should be.
By going as grisly and “realistic” as possible, even featherweight “satires” (BARELY) become horror movies, dealing in the same kind of blunt sadism of It Ends with Us and Sound of Freedom, the two key texts of 2020s American cinema. The message is—or was before last year’s election—Don’t even try to try, because you will die, and it will be horrible. Don’t do anything, don’t try to be anybody, just stay home and know that you’re doing what you’re supposed to do for… and here are your reasons, prefabricated for liberals, leftists, conservatives, and whoever else hasn’t realized that a new age is upon us. Time passes—and now, we have a Minecraft movie, a more authentic expression of contemporary American culture than anything A24 is putting out.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits