There are a lot of reports of big box office earnings and audiences calling out appreciative, mind-blown, what-the-hell-is-this-I-love-it comments during screenings of Cocaine Bear. Then they break out into exuberant applause at the end and follow it all up with enthusiastic posts online. Which just goes to show how lucky some movies get. They show up at the right place and time, striking people at the perfect reflex point so that they only have to exclaim, “Cocaine Bear!” to make others laugh uproariously in response.

Cocaine Bear is also that rare eccentric, original story produced on a modest scale, not some big Marvel movie or Oscar-bait film, that is getting a theatrical release and exceeding expectations of success. Jesus Revolution, which premiered this week and is also doing better than predicted, is another example. Movies like these provide an elusive flutter of hope among those watching Hollywood filmmaking emerge from the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic — while now facing an impending Writers Guild of America strike. Will the industry continue to double down on its Marvel-or-bust strategy, or will it perhaps start producing more and better Cocaine Bear–style releases?

In this sense, I’m Team Cocaine Bear, of course, though for all its success with audiences and critics, Cocaine Bear — considered as a movie rather than an industry phenomenon — is pretty weak. It’s chock-full of gruesome bear maulings, but it’s somehow not scary, perhaps because of the very badly digitized bear. And it’s only occasionally funny, even when it seems as if the missing one-liners would’ve written themselves. It’s one of those movies that really needs a packed, avid, vocal audience to make it seem better than it is, and I wish I’d been part of one when I watched it.