Review: Blood And Chocolate

A pretty cute teenaged werewolf is conflicted between keeping her family heritage a secret and falling in love with a human. Meanwhile, the leader of the wolf pack, or the “Alpha” in wolf terms, has chosen our heroin to be his next wife. Mild romance, a bunch of werewolves who look like the Backstreet Boys and a lot of wolves running in the forest ensue.

This movie should never have gone to the theaters; it should have gone straight to DVD. Let me count the ways by which this movie sucked: 1) let’s start with the title. Whoever was responsible for choosing this title should be fired now! Seeing how chocolate has nothing to do with the movie except for the fact that it’s the main character’s occupation (she works in a chocolaterie store front), which is barely touched on in the film. 2) All the werewolves in human form acted more like cats with their body language rather than wolves. What is with them springing themselves off the walls when they were running? It was way overdone and it just looked…stupid. 3) When you think of a werewolf movie, you have certain expectations when the werewolves change into form; this movie includes by far the worst transformation from any werewolf film that I have ever seen. I won’t give it away, but if you have the unfortunate opportunity of seeing this movie, you will surely find the sequence enchanting. 4) It just plain sucked.

Agnes Bruckner, who plays the main character Vivian, is fairly new on the scene and I don’t think she is ready to take on a leading role just yet. She was OK in the film, but I just didn’t get why she was denying what she was and seeing how she was like this her entire life. I dunno, I’d be pretty pumped if I had powers like that, but maybe that’s just me. As for her love interest, Aiden, played by Hugh Dancy, he’s a comic book artist doing research for his next graphic novel which just happens to be about the Loup Garoux (that’s French for werewolf). He is another no-namer, but he was actually not that bad. I have just come to the realization that Olivier Martinez, who is the Alpha werewolf, can barely speak English and aside from looking dark and mysterious, can’t act much either.

On a positive note (yes, there is one), I did like the way this film was shot with the lighting and composition. Not to mention that the film’s settings and set design were also well done. But those are the only positives that I could come up with and I tried pretty hard to find some more. When I think “werewolf”, I expect a little bit of thrills and scares, but there was none of that here– even the action sequences were lame! Most of them consisted of a chase through a forest and a stupid fight sequence in a church which was unrealistic and boring.

Unless someone threatens you at gun point, don’t waste your time or money on this movie because you will never get either of them back. Note to future werewolf filmmakers: Please make them better than this film.

— by Tim
Goernert