The outrageous and delightfully self-aware Cocaine Bear finally rampaged its way into theaters around the world over the weekend, delighting horror fans with its extremely far-fetched (but inspired by real events) premise.
While the titular beast was the work of some meticulous visual effects work, there was a man beneath all of the computer-generated wizardry on the set of the film standing in for the coked-up predator we see on the screen. That man’s name is Allan Henry, and he took his role as ‘Cokey’ the bear very seriously.
Henry is a veteran when it comes to being a motion capture performer, having contributed to blockbusters such as Avengers: Endgame, Planet of the Apes, and The Jungle Book. Unsurprisingly, he took a few cues from that latter performance for Cocaine Bear. He told /Film:
“Yeah, I looked at bears that have been in media, like the bear from “The Revenant.” I worked on “The Jungle Book” — at Weta, we did some stuff, so I looked at what we had done with Baloo for those sequences.”
The actor and stunt performer detailed how bringing life to Cokey was a special challenge for him, especially when compared to his motion capture work on the Planet of the Apes trilogy, or Godzilla vs Kong, given those characters had a higher level of intelligence. In Cocaine Bear, Henry quite simply had to be a bear. He recalled watching videos on the internet of real-world CCTV footage of bears tearing up residential areas.
It would seem that Henry played his part quite well – given that Cocaine Bear has had an overall positive reception, per review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. At the very least, it seems like everyone around the world is having a good time sharing memes about the film, including Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
You could say, the motion capture performer did the bare necessities for the role.