Overview: Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild thriller finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow ... and blood!

Verdict: A film with an instantly catchy and unforgettable title like Cocaine Bear might sound like it is going to be some frivolous D-grade schlock like Sharknado, but it is, believe it or not, well made with an A-film budget, an A-list cast and crew, and B-grade horror film sensibilities.

Whatever sliver of fact informs this based on a true story film - in the 1980s a bear was found dead having ingested a smuggler’s enormous haul of cocaine - what matters is what filmmaker Elizabeth Banks does with that premise.

For those who like their horror with a dash of comedy, Banks has made a laugh-out-loud-funny rollicking good time at the movies.

In the home of single working mum Sari (Kerri Russell), her sassy teenage daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) has planned a day ditching school with her best pal Henry (Christian Convery).

Not your usual teenage hoodlums, Dee Dee and Henry plan a day hiking in the Chattahoochee National Park so that Dee Dee can do some landscape painting in nature.

These scallywags don’t know the tsunami of bad luck they’re walking into, starting with the series of red backpacks a drug trafficker has dropped from the sky into that same park.

Then there’s the posse of bad guys heading to the park to collect their multi-million-dollar payday.

They include the small-time drug dealers Daveed (O’hea Jackson Jr) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), and Eddie’s violent drug kingpin father Syd (played by the late, great Ray Liotta).

A danger to truanting child and armed drug dealer alike is the enormous grizzly bear who accidentally sniffed one of the parcels of cocaine that burst open on impact, and has developed a violent need for more and more of the Bolivian marching powder.

The bear has already mauled some Scandinavian tourists, the national park ranger (Margo Martindale) and a visiting wildlife expert (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), but when Dee Dee’s mum Sari discovers her daughter has bunked off from school, she heads into the forest on the hunt for her daughter.

Even a cocaine-fueled rampaging bear might not be the apex predator against a pissed-off mum worried about her child.

Now, I’m the parent of a Doberman puppy, so I’m very used to being in the presence of an unstoppable rampaging animal you cannot reason with, but for this production, no animals were harmed.

The bear itself is CGI from the WETA workshop, with some performers credited with bear movements. That’s important to know so you can feel reassured as you suspend your disbelief and enjoy screenwriter Jimmy Warden’s adherence to the rules of the horror genre.

He signposts the awfulness of some of these humans, and makes their comeuppances at the paws of Cocaine Bear so earned.