Blood & Chocolate (2007)

Directed by Katja von Garnier. Starring Agnes Bruckner, Hugh Dancy, Olivier Martinez, Bryan Dick, Katja Riemann. [PG-13]

Stultifyingly banal romantic fantasy in the furry wardrobe of upper-class privilege and nü-Gothic horror. Teenage orphan (and personality vacuum) Bruckner is a werewolf who works at her chocolatier aunt’s shop (hence the title) when she meets a human artist (Dancy) researching werewolves for a comic book. She resists him for a while, broods and huffs and plays a weak hard-to-get game, but it’s no use; too bad this “interspecial” relationship is frowned (er, growled) upon by the pack leader (Martinez) and his hot-tempered son/cub (Dick). Insipid adaptation of a book by Annette Curtis Klause, it aspires to be a tween-baiting supernatural swooner—a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, if Juliet was occasionally a doggy—but it turns out to be some sort of transitional point between the modish, juvenile high trash of The Lost Boys and the superficial dress-up crap of Twilight, and waaaay closer in quality to the latter. In fact, what are the chances Stephanie Meyer gobbled up this YA drivel before finding the inspiration for her love-triangle-of-the-boring-and-the-damned? The werewolves even sparkle and glow as they transform into beasts, one of a handful of hysterically bad sights to linger in the memory. Another: slo-mo shots of male fashion models leaping from tall places (La Chienne Impertinente by Calvin Klein?). This cocoa confection is just dog doodoo; mind you don’t step in it.

11/100