Blood and Chocolate

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

The producers of Underworld are at it again as their surefire formula featuring a good-looking babe (Agnes Bruckner) caught up in an otherworldly predicament is hauled out again. Bruckner plays Vivian, part of a remaining group of the mythological loup garoux "shape shifters" who transform themselves into werewolves and fight to avoid extinction. As she skirts the two worlds in which she exists, the film turns into sort of a star-crossed love affair when she meets a graphic novelist (Hugh Dancy) coincidentally working on a story about her "kind," but kept in the dark regarding her beastly identity. Things are complicated when the pack's leader (Olivier Martinez), who has always had his own infatuation with her, pressures her to squelch her newfound relationship and stay in line with the rest of the breed. Atmosphere in the Bucharest environs where the movie was shot is nice and the CGI work with the wolves is first rate, but the whole enterprise is too hokey to really work. Horror fans will be turned off by the dopey romantic montages and those girls (clearly the target audience) looking for heartrending flutters will be repulsed by the violence, making Blood and Chocolate exactly what its title implies, a movie itself caught between two worlds, a sweet and sour concoction that all adds up to a lot of nonsensical scenes in search of an idea. Let's hope they have a good one before the inevitable sequel, Blood And Chocolate: Evolution.

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