Bittersweet Chocolate
Okay, I wasn't too keen on seeing Blood and Chocolate, the new so-called horror movie starring one of my favorite actresses Agnes Bruckner, about a werewolf girl in love with a human boy, but faces many obstacles from her pack of family wolves. After hearing mostly negative reactions and reviews about the movie, my interest was somewhat peeked by the somewhat almost-positive review it got at one of my favorite horror sites, Dread Central. So I decided to go catch it today. I practically ran to the theatre in the mall, so frazzled because I was running late, and I thought I would miss out the beginning of the film, only to reach a mere 5 minutes late, and be subjected to sitting through a half hour of commercials, with only a few movie trailers. Then once the film finally started, something must have went wrong in the projector room or something because the movie stopped playing for a good long 5 minutes or so. Nevertheless once the movie started up again, I was so no more thrilled to see it, as when I first heard how bad it would be. I was still a little hopeful though that there would be some saving grace for the film, but sadly, as expected it was through to most reviewers form and was pretty much a forgettable film. Not that it was all bad though. There was some decent music, and excellent outdoor shots of Romania, but it seemed like the movie itself didn't know where it was going, and what genre it should be classified in. As Nomad said in Dread Central's review, it was shopped around as a horror film to the horror community, when truly it was anything but. It had elements of horror to it, but to be honest, it didn't seem like it fit into any particular classification. The best that I can describe it is as an action driven, gothic, romantic drama. A movie that could have been a stellar film, if it had stuck to one formula, or more accurately stuck to novel's roots on which the movie was based on. Although I haven't read the novel myself, I heard it had been a hit with young adult readers. Another really big peeve I had about the movie was the hokey way the werewolves transformed from man to beast. Talk about idiotic. Jumping into the air, then shimmering into some kind of rainbow like colors before dropping back to the ground now in wolf form has just got to be the worst werewolf transition in movie history, I must say.
So in conclusion, I wanted to say, that I really wanted to like this movie, I really did. I had gone in with the hope that the movie would surprise me, and be not as bad as everyone was saying it would be, but sadly in the end, it was just as irksome as everyone said. There were some elements that made me smile though like the gothic supernatural side meets the mafia-mob like side. It was like I was in the city of Port Charles, where Port Charles meets General Hospital, only those shows do those elements better. If PC was still on, the creators of this movie could have learned a thing or two from that now classic daytime drama. All in all, Blood and Chocolate which should have just been a darkly haunting gothic thriller, that I no doubt would have loved if it was, just wasn't appealing to my taste buds much. And like The Covenant (which at least had some sweaty, wet, shirtless guys), don't expect to see a sequel. Agnes Bruckner rocked though! I'm sure if she wasn't in it, I probably won't have even bothered with the film at all.
So in conclusion, I wanted to say, that I really wanted to like this movie, I really did. I had gone in with the hope that the movie would surprise me, and be not as bad as everyone was saying it would be, but sadly in the end, it was just as irksome as everyone said. There were some elements that made me smile though like the gothic supernatural side meets the mafia-mob like side. It was like I was in the city of Port Charles, where Port Charles meets General Hospital, only those shows do those elements better. If PC was still on, the creators of this movie could have learned a thing or two from that now classic daytime drama. All in all, Blood and Chocolate which should have just been a darkly haunting gothic thriller, that I no doubt would have loved if it was, just wasn't appealing to my taste buds much. And like The Covenant (which at least had some sweaty, wet, shirtless guys), don't expect to see a sequel. Agnes Bruckner rocked though! I'm sure if she wasn't in it, I probably won't have even bothered with the film at all.