Cocaine Werewolf

There's something almost fascinating - in the worst possible sense - about Mark Polonia's cinema. His insistence on continuing to make films after the death of his brother John no longer stems from artistic vocation, nor even from the trashy underground spirit they once brushed against together. What drives Mark now is an obsessive, childish, and profoundly sad loop, based on recycling a flashy idea and squeezing it dry, as if each repetition added something new. It doesn't. And the most worrying part is: he seems genuinely convinced that it does.

Cocaine Werewolf is yet another example of this creative decay - an opportunistic ripoff of Cocaine Bear that neither parodies nor comments on anything, but simply grabs the formula "animal + drug" and presents it as if that alone should be funny. And that is its most fatal flaw: Mark Polonia genuinely believes his films are funny. He thinks there's humor in poorly composed shots, in senseless dialogue, in special effects that insult the viewer's intelligence. He thinks low-budget equals intentional comedy. It doesn't.

Polonia's films aren't funny - not even by accident. They lack timing, irony, and any shred of self-awareness. There's no sense of rhythm, no construction of absurdity, no well-measured exaggeration. There is, instead, a profoundly earnest clumsiness: Cocaine Werewolf seems made with the sincere belief that it will make people laugh - and that makes it even more unbearable. Because we're not dealing with a failed comedy; we're dealing with a comedy that never existed, dressed up as a joke.

Polonia's obsession with exploiting trendy themes with minimal variations is yet another sign of his complete disconnect from cinematic language. Once he finds a "funny" title (or one he thinks is funny), he runs it into the ground: he's done it with Amityville, with sharks, with dinosaurs, with Bigfoot. And now he'll do it with Cocaine Werewolf. How many installments? Three, five, maybe eleven. It doesn't matter. Each one will be worse than the last, because his work is void of content or intent - just an empty echo of himself and an endless catalogue of recycled ideas.

This film fails on every level. Its only virtue - that it ends - comes far too late. It can't even be salvaged as a failed short film: Cocaine Werewolf has no spark, no core, no anything. It's a one-line idea that anyone with a shred of self-criticism would've thrown out ten minutes into writing. Polonia, on the other hand, turns it into seventy minutes of pure nothingness, believing he's made people laugh.

And perhaps that's the saddest part: not that his films aren't funny - but that he truly believes they are.

This movie made me laugh, scream, and cry. I'm now deep in parasocial relationships with half of the cast and crew. It's hard to believe a movie with such simple premise could change me forever.

Light entertainment is important in hard times that we currently live in, and it's easy to forget that. But then people like Mark Polonia come in and say "hey. Let's make a movie about a werewolf that's high on cocaine and kills people". And sometimes that's all you need. If art's goal is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, I believe Cocaine Werewolf achieved that goal.

I love you Mark.

Great, another movie from Mark Polonia, whom isn't exactly known for his high quality movies. But the movie's title was funny enough to make me sit down and watch it, though I have to admit that my expectations were non-existing, as this was a movie directed by Mark Polonia.

The storyline was pretty straight forward, though you're not in for anything grand. So it wasn't as if writers Ford Austin and Tyger Torrez conjured up the next great thing in Hollywood here. Not that I was expecting them to.

The only face on the cast list that I was familiar with was Jeff Kirkendall and Jamie Morgan. Yeah, I have been watching too many Mark Polonia movies, I know.

With "Cocaine Werewolf" obviously being a werewolf movie, then you have a werewolf running around. And while this 2024 movie definitely was a step up from the usual crap that you get from Mark Polonia, it was by no means great effects. It was plainly just a Halloween latex mask, as there was no articulation to the werewolf's face.

The blood effects were laughably bad; it was painfully obvious that it was horribly rendered CGI effects. The CGI blood was so poorly made that even a blind man would go 'seriously?'

The intro sequence was actually quite good, and a step up from the usual stuff you get in a Mark Polonia movie.

While "Cocaine Werewolf" was by no means a great movie, it was actually better than the usual dung heaps you get from Mark Polonia movies.

My rating of "Cocaine Werewolf" lands on a three out of ten stars.

Cocaine Werewolf is an Indie Horror film from Mark Polonia. When his Uber driver has to make a pit stop, Jack (Brive Kennedy) gets bitten by a werewolf. Jack also finds multiple bags of cocaine. Jackpot! Lol! So as Jack escapes the werewolf, he takes his newly found nose candy with him.

Having been bitten by a werewolf, Jack is now a werewolf himself. The cocaine seems to accelerate the transformation into a werewolf for Jack. Jack wakes up in the woods near the location that an independent horror film is being shot. The film's two female actresses bring Jack back to the house their filming at. The crew agrees to get him home in a day or two when they are finished filming. Jack's little secret comes out on the film set, sparked by doing coke with the film's director.

Cocaine Werewolf is a pretty fun film. It's a low budget indie film, so the costumes and special effects are on par with the budget.

Let's start by saying the cocaine fad started with Cocaine Bear which I absolutely loved! It was funny and action packed with a great cast. There have been several iterations since that film all utilizing the Cocaine title line. What's bad about this movie...just about everything. No story, acting is terrible, there is almost no budget so you know the graphics are minute (and no I don't mean minute but thanks to English so many words spell alike and sound different). What's good and actually kept me entertained throughout the film? The music. The music actually kept me interested and because of that I finished the movie. It's not the worst that I've seen, but it's not terrible if you can get past the initial spotting of the werewolf. I always tell people to give movies a try because not everything is for everyone but you will never know unless you give it a try.