Review: Bear (2010)

Director: John Rebel

Starring: Brendan Michael Coughlin, Patrick Scott Lewis

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1468703/

“This one has balls!”

-A Very Stupid Girl

This is a special Valentine's Day review. Enjoy!

You have to give this movie credit for not misleading the viewers. It is titled Bear, and there are bears in it. Real bears! Yup. That’s pretty much the only thing this ass pile of a movie has going for it. At all. Looking at the Wikipedia page, I can see that there were four producers for this film. Four producers! And not one of them had the slightest notion that they were contributing to career suicide. Or rather, a career gang-bang followed by ritualistic execution at the hands of a group of trained samurai from the Feudal Japanese era.

I mean GOD this was bad! You people have no idea. I would support bombing small countries if there were going to be copies of this movie destroyed. It’s just so appallingly bad on every level imaginable! But as much as I’d like to keep on railing against the badness of this movie, we do have to get to the meat and talk about why. So, sigh, let’s get it over with.

Unfortunately this movie is probably scarier...

The film kicks off with a rollicking, super-exciting opening scene of…a bunch of morons driving around on a desert road while the credits play over the screen so we know who to hunt down and kill afterwards. You don’t know much about these characters yet, but after a few scenes, you’ll be praying to go back to these scenes of them just driving around. It almost looks like a scene out of Dark Country, although saying that is an insult to Dark Country, to be honest. They veer off the road and onto a random desert path because apparently, it’s a shortcut. Sure it is. It’s a shortcut that doesn’t appear to lead anywhere specific, just into some dark woods…how would that be any easier than driving on a straight road, you shitheads?

So after only driving a little bit into the woods, their car breaks down. Brilliant. They then apparently don’t do anything SMART like going and looking for help until nightfall. I know what you’re thinking. A bunch of kids lost in the woods while a force of nature attacks them? How is that different from any other generic horror movie? Well, this one is a million times worse. Get ready, folks.

So they see a bear, and the one guy pulls out his gun and shoots it about ten times at extremely close range, eventually killing it. How did that gun have so many rounds? Why did he have to shoot it instead of just heading for the car horn and blasting that at it? I don’t know, and neither does anyone who worked on this movie. I’m not even sure there was a real script.

Yes, this is a movie without a script. We really are lost in the woods, folks.

But anyway, another bear shows up, and one of the bimbos in the group says that it’s a different bear because “This one has balls!” Why is she looking at the bear’s lower regions again? That’s very disturbing.

It chases them around a bit and eventually they end up getting back into their own van and trying to run it over. It moves, though – crafty bear, it is – and they just run into a tree like total morons, breaking the car even worse. The bear tips it over on its side and traps them inside. It leaves for a while, leaving the group to their own misery – and ours, too, as we are subjected to their horrible attempts at communication. This is the point where I really start to wonder where they found these bungholes, as I’ve seen better acting from middle school plays – from elementary school plays, even! A car goes by, they shout and scream at it, but it just keeps going. I think it must have been the director. Even he couldn’t take this movie anymore, like it’s some kind of out of control Frankenstein’s Monster type of aberration.

So now, we are without a script and without a director, and we still have an hour to go. Why do I have the feeling this isn’t going to end well? Can someone send reinforcements?!

"This movie is doing damage to the reputation of bears everywhere!"

After that, we get some more tender moments where our lead fucktards fight and whine some more about crap that doesn’t matter. Every other line in these scenes seems to be some kind of horrible PSA, with the two women talking about how they shouldn’t do drugs or smoke or drink, and the guys talking about why the older brother is a horrible person because he does a job for the government. They solve nothing, and then they try to leave the car only to get trapped in a long pipe, in which the bear crawls through the other side and tries to get at them. They end up back in the car again – oops, except for one of the girls, who gets murdered finally.

Yay! One down, three to go! We’re almost there, people. That glorious moment when these people are no longer polluting the Earth.

Oh, and I think now’s a good time to point out how hideously UNSCARY it is to watch real bears roaming around? I mean I guess it’s impressive if you’re either completely insane or completely retarded, but once the novelty wears off, what’s the purpose? This movie fails to evoke any kind of scares. I think it’d be scarier if you just had a guy in a fucking bear suit just running around picking these wastes of life off! Which they do for some of the action scenes. I guess the movie’s claim of being ALL REAL BEARS, NO EFFECTS was bullshit after all, big surprise! Isn’t there EVEN ONE GODDAMNED THING this film did right? Just one tiny morsel of quality? I seriously can’t find anything.

"...what?"

So then their next plan is for just one of the guys to make a run for it and try to get help. Yeah. Just one of them. It wouldn’t be smart for ALL of them to start walking out to the open road, would it? That would just be a waste of resources. Who else would then sit in the car and provide skull-numbing dialogue for us all to grow stupider to? The guy goes running through the woods like a maniac when he could just walk along the side of the nice paved road from the beginning of the movie, but I guess he felt this Rambo-wannabe shit was cooler.

Meanwhile our other two dipshits sit around in the car and exchange dialogue about how the little brother got the older brother’s wife pregnant. Yeah. They’re actually introducing this into the movie. What’s next, are they going to tell us that the older brother actually is broke and just lost his house?

Oh, wait. They do tell us that. Goddammit, this movie has more attempts at introducing pointless, sappy-ass drama than a bad Spanish soap opera.

So that first douchebag, the older brother, ends up back at the car somehow, ravaged and quite scared. He says – and brace yourselves for this one – that he saw his parents at the restaurant and then the bear dragged him back through the woods to the car again. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, I think everybody has finally lost their minds. How stupid does this movie think we are? It’s just downright insulting that this film expects me to believe that plot point. But wait! It’s not over yet! When they’re all inside the car, the younger brother says “The bear knows us better than we know ourselves right now.”

Yes! The bear is actually plotting against them in a battle of mental warfare! Why didn’t I think of that? That bear is just so cunning and intelligent! This is a true battle of wits here! Real, gripping psychological tension!

So, you’re probably thinking this was the worst of the movie, right? Well, no; they still have several more ways to torture and lobotomize you before the end credits. Strap in, kids, because you’re in for some truly worthless cinema! I mean, if you want an example of the absolute nadir of humanity – the very bottom, and I mean this as truly as I have ever meant anything in my heart – check out the next scene where the three characters are in the car arguing about the older brother’s wife being pregnant. There’s literally nothing redeemable about this scene. It’s so…utterly devoid of worth, in any respect imaginable. The directing and audio suck so you can barely understand them. The acting sucks, so you can’t believe anything they’re saying. And the characters themselves are just such shitty people, such awful, unlikeable assholes by any standards that you just have to marvel at how bad this scene really is.

This movie is a good argument for Darwinian natural selection. Clearly these people were not meant to repopulate the Earth, ever, or to leave the woods. Nature put them here to be picked off by the bear so they couldn’t ever put their seed on the Earth again. With that said, JOIN ME IN ROOTING FOR THE BEAR!

So while the bear mauls his younger brother, the older douche walks his wife away from the car and then engages in a romantic make out session with her that is pretty much the most inappropriate and inconsiderate thing to do at a time when a family member is in mortal danger. I mean seriously, you dickbag, what kind of a brother are you? How can I even be expected to sit here and WATCH this crap any longer? Just end it already!

The effect that watching Bear has on a normal American viewer.

To his credit, the older douche does eventually go back and fight the bear too, resulting in both his and his brother’s deaths. The camera might not show any of the action, instead choosing to focus on the wife’s terrible imitation of grief in a horrible close up, but at least the two assholes are finally dead. The camera pans over their dead bodies and…HOORAY! Victory is ours! You have NO IDEA how happy I was to see these two dirtbags dead finally! Two of the worst characters in cinema history finally put to rest! Now just kill the last girl and this movie won’t be quite as bad as I thought after all!

Wait. What do you mean she apologizes to the bear and it just lets her go? What kind of shitty ending is that? No, seriously; that’s what happens. She just looks at it, says “Sorry” and then Smokey the Dumbass over there decides to be charitable and let her live. Which means she gets to procreate and spread whatever mental deficiencies she and her deceased maggot-ridden boyfriend had to a newborn child! AHHHHH!

So, yeah, the credits are played over some pointless shots of the bear roaming around the car, and I’m left entirely confused what the point of this whole thing was. By god this was a horrible experience. I wouldn’t even wish this on my worst enemies! Well, okay, that’s a lie; I would, but it’s still one of the worst movies ever. It’s hard to describe how much pain this movie inflicted on me. It’s just agonizing from beginning to end, with every single plot point, every line of dialogue and every camera shot scarring me for life. I’ll never be the same. AVOID THIS MOVIE AT ALL COSTS! As for me, I’m off to eliminate every copy of this movie. Wish me luck!