Blood & Chocolate is an odd movie. The marketing proudly proclaims that it’s “from the makers of Underworld,” as if that’s a sign of quality. You know what else is from the producers of Underworld: Underworld. And you know what else they’ve been responsible for lately?
The Nancy-boy hair gel warlock flick The Covenant, a movie that made the original Bewitched look like a documentary about the life of the modern pagan. (By the way, both The Covenant and Underworld: Evolution made my worst of 2006 list.) So going into Blood & Chocolate, neither hopes nor expectations were very high. But the quality direction by Katja von Garnier proves to be the key to elevating this werewolf romance from dull to passable.
In a prologue, we meet a young girl named Vivian who lives in a cabin in the Colorado Rockies. She becomes the sole survivor when a group of hunters kill her parents and two older brothers. We learn why as we catch up to Vivian (Agnes Bruckner) as a twenty-something American ex-pat living in Romania.
Secretly, Romania is home to a secret society of werewolves led by the charismatic Gabriel (Oliver Martinez). Gabriel chooses a new wife from the pack every seven years, and Vivian’s on the shortlist. But like the typical rebel, Vivian doesn’t think she wants to end Gabriel’s seven-year itch. Instead, she begins to date another ex-pat named Aiden (Hugh Dancy), who’s studying Romania’s werewolf legends for a graphic novel.
Much to the credit of von Garnier and screenwriters Ehren Kruger and Christopher Landon, the romance between Vivian and Aiden feels real and not as stagnant as the one between Selene and Michael in Underworld. In other words, you can tell that there’s a romance between these characters with real caring and real feelings.
Another appreciated factor in the script of Blood & Chocolate is that Aiden is not cast as a typical girlie man, but as someone who is willing to fight back and even a little bit proactive. Although I think they may have gone a bit too far, as Aiden looks like Rambo, or at least Rob Schneider in Judge Dredd. Leaps of logic aside, I appreciated von Garnier’s decision to use real wolves instead of some crappy looking prosthetics or CGI.
The first half of the movie was pretty strong as it laid out the set-up, the characters and the mythology, but unfortunately, when Aiden learns of Vivian’s hairy secret, the whole thing starts to degenerate into typical action-horror trash. Aiden predictably reacts badly when he finds out, which, of course, plays into Vivian’s own fears.
Gabriel, of course, goes off the deep end as his presumed new wife makes eyes at another guy who may or may not know the secrets of the pack, and of course, Vivian comes to his defence on the verge of his untimely hunter-prey execution by the pack. The whole thing just got horribly clichéd, and I haven’t even mentioned certain prophecies.
Regardless of narrative concerns, Blood & Chocolate is actually a fairly decent gothic romance that should provide a significant distraction to the January blahs if you’re so inclined to such a condition. While this modest success won’t make me take back any previous statements or guarantee a moratorium on stylist jokes and The Covenant in the future, the producers of Underworld are redeemed somewhat. I eagerly await their next film, may I suggest something with leprechauns and lucky charms.
