Black Bear

2020 1h 46m EN

😐

6.4

MID

🍅

89%

FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

6.5

IMDB

★6.4TMDB · 308🍅89%Rotten Tomatoes●79Metacritic★6.5IMDB · 18,336

DramaThriller

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

At a remote lake house in the Adirondack Mountains, a couple entertains an out-of-town guest looking for inspiration in her filmmaking. The group quickly falls into a calculated game of desire, manipulation, and jealousy, unaware of how dangerously intertwined their lives will soon become.

“Some stories are better left unspoiled.”

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Cast

Aubrey Plaza
Allison
Christopher Abbott
Gabe
Sarah Gadon
Blair
Paola Lázaro
Cahya
Grantham Coleman
Baako
Lindsay Burdge
Maude
Lou Gonzalez
Chris
Shannon O'Neill
Simone

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Lawrence Michael Levine
Writers: Lawrence Michael Levine
Languages: English, Spanish
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 7

ERA

Did you know

Released 6 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 7

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Spanish.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Lawrence Michael Levine, shot by Rob Leitzell. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Bryan Scary. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Matthew L. Weiss shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 7

CAST

Did you know

Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 7

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt9601220 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Lawrence Michael Levine directs. Rob Leitzell behind the camera. Bryan Scary scores. Matthew L. Weiss cuts. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English, Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 6 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Spanish.
3Directed by Lawrence Michael Levine, shot by Rob Leitzell. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Bryan Scary. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Matthew L. Weiss shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon carry the top of the cast.
7IMDB entry: tt9601220 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
8Classified under 9 themes, including "jealousy", "love triangle", "pregnancy", "dark comedy".

The technical file

Cinematography: Rob Leitzell
Original score: Bryan Scary
Editing: Matthew L. Weiss
Production design: Tracy Dishman
Costume design: Allison Pearce
Makeup / hair: Josie Rodriguez
VFX supervisor: Lou Pecora
Sound: Tom Ryan
Stunt coordinator: Chazz Menendez
Runtime: 106 min · 1h 46m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Black Bear (2020)
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 79/100
IMDB rating: 6.5/10 · 18,336 votes
MPAA: R

Awards

2 wins & 15 nominations total

Also by

Lawrence Michael Levine

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

tmdb154355192021-04-15
★ 7/10
a movie within a movie within a movie. epic... except it's not I do want to see Aubrey Plaza in more lead roles though
r96sk2022-03-02
★ 7/10
Aubrey Plaza is terrific in this! <em>'Black Bear'</em> is intriguing from beginning to end. I did find the first half to be the stronger and most interesting part, though the conclusion is still fairly captivating all the same. As noted, Plaza is excellent throughout - she carries the film, no doubt. Christopher Abbott has a few moments, while it's neat to see <em>'<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(TV_series)" rel="nofollow">The Walking Dead</a>'</em> newcomer Paola Lázaro involved.
tmdb280390232022-08-28
★ 4/10
I’d really like to like Black Bear. I actually was really liking it a lot, even enjoying it, right up to the halfway point, where the whole thing comes crashing down faster than Kevin Spacey’s career. Black Bear is divided into two parts; The Bear on the Road, and The Bear by the House (let’s call them BB1 and BB2); both parts end with the appearance of the titular Ursus americanus, but could very well have ended with a sign saying ‘Dead End’. In a remote lake house in the Adirondacks, Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon), welcome Allison (Aubrey Plaza), an up-and-coming film director. Like the stereotypical artists, these three are creative and intelligent, but also childish and belligerent. Allison is a bald-faced pathological liar, Gabe is immature and manipulative, and Blair doesn’t let her pregnancy get in the way of a burgeoning alcoholism (the casting, by the way, is spot-on). Their interactions are fraught with patronizing passive-aggressiveness.This is plain good ol’ rubbernecking fun. The dialogue is both obscene and highbrow(I especially enjoyed the use of the word “solipsistic”), but sadly the biggest insult, to the audience’s intelligence, takes the form of a cliffhanger —for lack of a better term — that segues into BB2.The second half is a meta-textual quagmire wherein there’s a movie-within-the-movie, but that inner movie isn’t really the movie we were watching thus far, so presumably there’s a hypothetical third movie buried somewhere in this conceptual nightmare. If BB1 was a about a train wreck from which we could not take our eyes off, BB2 is just a train wreck, period. The only quality that crosses over from the first half is the acting, which is probably even better — but that just makes me feel sorry for the cast. All things considered, what we have here are two drafts of the same admittedly good idea, which doesn’t equal a single finished product. Instead of going back to the drawing board, the writer/director has simply opted to present the same underdeveloped premise twice in a row, both times neglecting to come up with a proper conclusion.