Blood and Chocolate – Movie Review
Happy Werewolf Wednesday, everyone! This week I’m going to talk about a werewolf flick that perhaps rightly flew under many people’s radars (but was loosely based on a much more well received young adult novel of the same name) – Blood and Chocolate.
The movie centers on nineteen-year old Vivian, a werewolf who lives in Bucharest with her aunt Astrid and cousin Rafe after the murder of her family by werewolf hunters. When Vivian meets Aiden Galvin, a young American graphic artist living in Bucharest and currently writing a graphic novel about the fabled loup garous of the region, they fall in love. But their relationship is not meant to be because Vivian has been promised to Gabriel, the leader of the Romanian werewolf clan, and Gabriel will go to any length to separate them.
As far as a film goes, the 11% on Rotten Tomatoes speaks volumes. It’s certainly not an Academy Award winner by any stretch of the imagination, and, frankly, even if you’re looking for a mindless, fun flick on a Friday night, you might want to give this one a miss and pop in Underworld instead. The melodrama is thick, the dialogue painful at times, performances largely phoned in, and CGI — well, perhaps it’s better if we don’t talk about the CGI.
I wanted to talk about this film though, because the book it’s based off is actually well worth the read if you are so inclined! Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause came out in 2007, at the beginning of the paranormal romance for teens craze (Twilight had burst onto the scene some 2 years previously) but is far better written, and deals with themes Twilight only skirts. It’s dark, visceral, and compelling. Plus, it deals with female werewolves — always of fascination to yours truly!
What are some other werewolf adaptions that didn’t quite live up to the original source material? I’d love to get some more book recommendations in the comments!
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