Never having read the book, I found Blood and Chocolate to be a lovely surprise, an imaginative and visually lush picture firmly rooted in the tradition of gothic romance and elegiac horror films about misunderstood monsters.

A far cry from such sneakily subversive werewolf-sex tales as "The Company of Wolves" (1984) or "Ginver Snaps" (2000), this pallid little picture is all "Lost Boys" (1987) posturing by way of the sublimely ridiculous "Covenant" (2006).

Entertaining in a B-movie sort of way, and you can't help admiring its earnestness about the philosophical issues it invokes.

The entire star-crossed scenario is conveyed with the narrative simplicity of a musicvideo, lingering in an almost fetishistic manner on sensual details (boxes of chocolates, a blood-red ribbon) while compressing important elements of the story into clumsy montages.

The lead performers certainly are highly attractive, making this one of the more sensual werewolf pictures in quite a while -- and to their credit, they do manage to keep a straight face throughout. But ultimately, the anemic Blood and Chocolate could have benefited from a little less chocolate and a lot more blood.