Aubrey Plaza’s Perfect R-Rated Thriller Is An Unfairly Overlooked Masterpiece

By Robert Scucci
| Updated 18 seconds ago

Have a crappy first draft and want to make it into a better second, third, fourth, and final one? You might want to check out 2020’s Black Bear because the film shows you the process in real time, and I think I just spoiled the entire thing for you. But did I really?

It’s a movie about a woman named Allison (Aubrey Plaza), who’s staying at a beautiful remote cabin to work on a project, either a novel or a film. I think this part is obvious. We get a look at her morning routine, complete with sitting in a red swimsuit on a dock overlooking a foggy lake. We watch her sit down at a table by the window and start writing, occasionally looking up to take in the scenery before putting pen to paper.

We then get what I believe are two “drafts” in the form of acts, and the whole thing spirals from there. While there’s a lot of discussion about what Black Bear is actually about (just check the IMDb reviews, lots of people are rightfully confused), I think the answer is simple: it’s one of those movies about a writer who’s writing something; something that would come off as extremely pretentious in almost any other context.

Because of how open-ended the whole thing is, I could be way off the mark, but you really just need to sit down with Black Bear and enjoy it for what it truly is, no matter what kind of subtext you’re picking up from it: three actors showing an incredible range and crushing every single scenario.

Part One: The Bear in the Road

Before each act in Black Bear, we see Allison go through what appears to be her writing routine. She sits alone in the wilderness, folds up her towel, walks back to the cabin, and gets to work. In the first act, “The Bear in the Road,” we’re introduced to the other characters we’ll be spending time with: the pregnant and unhappily married couple Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon).

Gabe is a former musician who owns a bed and breakfast that he runs with Blair. Allison is a film director who chose to stay at their bed and breakfast so she could find inspiration for her next project. Gabe is secretly obsessed with Allison’s work, and Blair is a problem drinker even though the baby bump is starting to show.

This act ends almost exactly how you’d expect, with Allison and Gabe growing close, and Blair absolutely losing her mind over it. When things truly heat up in “The Bear in the Road,” the screen goes black, and we once again see Allison sitting alone on the dock in a red swimsuit, folding her towel, walking back to the cabin, and opening her notebook, setting up the second part of the movie.

Part Two: The Bear by the Boat House

The second half of Black Bear introduces the same characters but in a totally different context. Here, Allison is an actress who’s married to Gabe, who’s now the filmmaker, and Blair is another actress in the movie he’s working on. The same jilted lover story plays out, but the roles are reversed, and we’re on an actual movie set.

Allison is the unstable woman whose husband is having an affair, and she’s being manipulated by the crew into delivering a powerhouse performance during the final shoot. Blair and Gabe flirt and stage an affair between scenes, pushing Allison over the edge. The whole thing plays like a behind-the-scenes reel of a more developed version of “The Bear in the Road,” as if the first act we witnessed was the rough draft, and what happens here is the result of further refinement.

You see kernels of the original idea play out in “The Bear by the Boat House,” but it has a distinctly different flavor, which all clicks again when the whole thing eventually transitions back to Allison sitting on the dock in her red swimsuit, folding her towel, heading back to the cabin, and starting to write.

A Deconstruction Of The Creative Process

Most of the time, I try to keep my reviews spoiler free. I like to talk about the vibe, the talent, and the themes a film talks about, but breaking down Black Bear without first laying out its mechanics, which effectively spoils the movie, is impossible.

Or, I’ll ask again, is it?

My read on the film is that we’re watching a writer at work, and their ideas coming to life through the vignettes we get to see. The characters across both acts are the same but different in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Each act starts with crappy dialogue that eventually becomes more nuanced and intricate. The same can be said for the acting. Both vignettes feel like working drafts where the writer doesn’t quite yet know what story they’re trying to tell, and they’re working through the first few passages so they can figure it out.

I could be completely off base here, but that’s what Black Bear feels like. It’s a moment in the creative process when the creator is still trying to find their voice on a new project.

That said, I can’t say for certain that my assessment is correct here, and I can absolutely see why this film could be frustrating to some. At face value, it’s disjointed, its characters are all over the place, and aside from their names and the setting they occupy, they’re not really the same people. But that’s the point. We’re watching these characters get sketched out in real time by Allison, and we’re just seeing snippets of personality here.

That’s why the characters transition from one-dimensional to complex, with conflicting motives and alliances without any real rhyme or reason. It’s also a testament to everybody’s performance here, because they basically have to act like bad actors when the script is bad, and then up their game every single time (writer) Allison has a creative epiphany that allows the story to improve.

If there’s any reason to watch Black Bear, it’s for everybody’s range. I’m sure there are dozens of other ways to read this film, but I’m satisfied believing what I choose to believe. Maybe the film is actually about a girl named Allison who has amnesia, who returns to a location where she was traumatized, and she’s trying to remember what happened to her. Maybe the Black Bear is the friends we made along the way. Or maybe, just maybe, we’re watching somebody write a novel, or a play, or a movie, and we’re getting to see what happens when an incomplete story gets a full production to show you how important it is to always work past the first draft.

As of this writing, you can stream Black Bear for free on Tubi.