by Thomas Ferguson

Peanut Butter and chocolate…mmmm, what a combination. Cherries and chocolate…pure heaven! Blood and chocolate? Now, there’s two things that don’t go well together. They don’t work for your taste buds and they definitely don’t work in the new horror release of the same name.

Vivian (Agnes Bruckner), a young woman in Romania, must make the ultimate decision. She must decide whether to follow her heart and fall in love with the wrong guy or be loyal to her family and its bloody secret.

Vivian is a werewolf who doesn’t agree with the laws and rituals of her people. They love to hunt humans and use it as a sport. She doesn’t hunger for blood like the rest. This makes her an outsider to everyone she knows.

The only person that truly understands her is Aiden (Hugh Dancy), a graphic artist who has a fascination with werewolves and the legends about them. He has traveled to Romania to do research for his latest book.

The two meet and eventually fall in love. Their romance becomes a threat. The other members of Vivian’s wolf pack have grown alarmed that Vivian’s new love could ruin the plans already laid out for her. According to legend, Vivian must marry the pack leader Gabriel (Olivier Martinez). Every seven years he must take a new wife and Vivian is next on the list.

Soon after, Aiden becomes the main course when the pack finds out that not only is he stealing Vivian away from them, but he has also killed Gabriel’s son Rafe (Bryan Dick), who has attacked Aiden and exposed their dark secret. For their survival, the wolves’ existence must not be known to humans. He must be killed to protect their secret, but Vivian is not about to lose her first true love.

The set up and beginning of this movie was so well executed. I loved the first 45 minutes or so, but then, things started to crumble. It became this melodrama with a few horror elements thrown in for good measure. I thought I was in for a good werewolf story and what I got was a daytime soap opera. Can we say false advertising?

I could see that the rest of the audience felt the way I did. People talked throughout and a few people even walked out. Word to marketing people…be honest. I guess they are trying to create a new sub genre. Horror and romance…Hormance…maybe Rorror. Who knows and most importantly, who cares?

I really tried to like this movie. It didn’t rely on gross out tactics to tell the story. I appreciated that, plus the werewolf transformations were different and quite beautiful actually. I’ve never seen that in a werewolf movie before. Aside from that, it was just plain dull. Not a bad movie, but not one I’d tell people to rush out to see.