Blood and Chocolate

Today, I am going to be talking about another movie that you haven’t seen, Blood and Chocolate. I think this movie may go down as having possibly the worst title in movie history. That may be one reason it performed so poorly at the box office (another may be that it’s not very good). I can’t imagine what the marketing people were thinking when they tried to come up with a way to advertise this film. Its title sounds like some sort of fetish porn film featuring goth freaks and…I don’t want to go there. The movie is based on a young-adult book of the same name, written by Annette Curtis Klause.

The main character, Vivian (played by Agnes Bruckner), is a werewolf-type individual. I say werewolf-type because she is not really a werewolf in the sense of The Howling or American Werewolf in London or those Underworld movies. She is a member of the Loup-garoux, which is a shape-shifting group of people that change from humans into wolves. When they’ve transformed, they just look like your regular, everyday wolf. They don’t follow any of the typical werewolf rules (like changing during a full moon) except for the rule about silver. For some reason, silver is a poison to them.

At the beginning of the film, Vivian and her family are living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado (pretty close to where I live). Vivian goes out for a hunt and upon her return, witnesses the murder of her family. The movie then shifts time and place. We now find Vivian as a nineteen year-old living in Romania (where all cool hybrid human creatures live). She meets some graphic novel writing boy named Aiden. She falls for this guy, but it is a “forbidden love” (enter Romeo and Juliet plot-line) because she is a shape-shifter and is betrothed to the leader of the group, Gabriel. Her crazy cousin--I think his name is Rafe (they all have these stupid names)--doesn’t approve of her romance with Aiden. I didn’t approve of her romance with Aiden either, because Aiden is a douchebag. Oh…the chocolate part of the title comes from the fact that Vivian works in a cute little chocolate shoppe.

A bunch of running and jumping off of walls (for no reason) happens in this movie. In fact, the first time we see Vivian in Romania, she is running down alleys and jumping off of walls. These shape-shifters are great jumpers. They’re constantly leaping off of roofs and ledges. The effect of the Loup-garoux changing from human to wolf is kind of lame. They run and jump forward, and when they are horizontal in the air, they get blindingly bright and land on the ground as wolves. Also, before the transition, all the males take off their shirts and the females take off their coats, but nothing else, to ensure the PG-13 rating. I expected the wolves to still be wearing pants and bras and stuff after the transition, but the clothing items must have magically disappeared or been incorporated into the wolf fur. For all the hunting and eating, there is not much gore in this film. A few wolf-people get shot with silver bullets, which results in a wispy smoke effect emanating from the wound. If a Loup-garoux gets silver poisoning, he/she can be treated with a substance called Antigen-Ag (educational hint: Ag is the periodic symbol for silver).

That’s about it. This movie is pretty slow-paced. The direction is decent, with the exception of a few cheesy, slow-motion music video type scenes. A lot of scenes have that blue tinting that is so prevalent in the Underworld movies. I like the fact that this film was shot on location in Romania. The writing is okay, but some of the actors are pretty bad (especially the cousin guy). Agnes Bruckner did a really good job convincing me that she was torn between her Loup-garoux lifestyle and a normal, human existence. If you want to see her in a better movie, check out The Woods.

This movie will appeal to fans of the TV show Supernatural and people who really like werewolf mythology. A better title for this movie would be The Loup-garoux: We’re Kind Of Like Werewolves. Maybe they can use that for the imminent DTV sequel.