My quick rating – 2.3/10. I saw Bears on a Ship pop up and thought, “Hey, 75 minutes. Worst case, I lose an hour and change and find a chesseball guilty pleasure.” Didn’t take half that time for my mind to wander off, wondering when they would jam the obvious quote in.
The premise is pure bargain-bin poetry. During an airline strike in Mexico, stranded passengers hop on a ship back to the U.S., unaware they’re sharing the voyage with two man-eating bears. That sentence alone should’ve been enough to either deliver trashy fun gore or glorious incompetence. What it delivers instead is mostly just…incompetence, without an ounce of gore. Or fun for that matter.
The opening gives us a pair of hick-stereotype hunters chasing bears for money, and to be fair, director Eduardo Castrillo wisely avoids showing any wildlife early on. Smart move. If you don’t see the bears, you don’t see the budget. Unfortunately, hiding the creatures does absolutely nothing to hide the horrendous acting. The first half hour plays like a casting call for “People You Actively Root to Be Mauled.” Every character arrives preloaded with irritation, zero charm, and dialogue that sounds like it was read off cue cards taped to the wall behind the camera.
Then we meet the stereotypical stoner dude, who finds a bear locked up on the ship and decides, and this is true, that releasing it might get him laid. Galaxy-brain thinking. Later, we get a “two of my men were killed” joke while holding up three fingers, completely missing the timing that would’ve made it land. Comedy is all about rhythm, and this guy’s playing a different song entirely.
When the movie finally shows the bears, you’ll wish it hadn’t. The highlight reel includes – a CGI bear outline in an extremely dim corridor, a glove pretending to be a bear paw, and a brief, tragic glimpse of someone wearing the lower half of a bear suit awkwardly climbing stairs. It genuinely looks like a junior high school play where the budget was spent on snacks instead of costumes. Occasionally, some bargain-bin CGI is sprinkled into the kills for “special effects,” and yes, the quotation marks are doing a lot of work here.
And finally someone says, “I’m tired of these mth$rf#cking bears on this mth$rf#cking ship,” and I’m not saying Sam Jackson’s lawyers should be alerted, but I’m also not not saying it.
The end credits reveal this was crowdfunded, which is honestly the scariest part of the film. Imagine knowing your hard-earned money helped bring this #turkey to life. This flick has everything. Wooden performances, off-timed line delivery, lighting so bad it feels accidental, and set design that seems confused about what movie it’s in. See that poster? Forget it. No giant bears. No spectacle. Not even convincing bears.
The best thing about Bears on a Ship is the cover art. Unfortunately, it’s also the most misleading thing in the entire movie.
