Jamie is a depressed young divorced man, but one day his life takes a different turn. Somehow he is psychically linked to the most beautiful woman he has ever laid eyes on, and drifts in and out of what she's doing, sees what she sees, and feels what she feels. But one day Jamie experience a vision of a horrible kind, and decides to track down the woman.
I'm not a big fan of Mick Garris (Critters 2, Freddy's Nightmares, Sleepwalkers etc), but I guess I kinda turned into a fan for creating the Masters of Horror series which was a brilliant idea. Too bad that Chocolate is not half as brilliant. On one hand, I really liked the idea behind Chocolate, but the way it was executed was unfortunately not as great. The flick has some nice elements to it, but is the story in the series that is the least horrifying. I don't even wanna call it a horror movie since it felt much more like a thriller. There are a lot of things that were good when it comes to what was in Chocolate, but as a horror movie, it pretty much falls flat.
We get to follow Jamie (Henry Thomas) who's a divorced man who doesn't seem to happy about his existens. He works with the development of artificial flavors, is on a strict diet, and life pretty much couldn't be more non-exciting. But one day he can suddenly taste chocolate and describe its taste, without having eaten any, and that's just the beginning of what eventually happens to him. Soon he starts having all kinds of different visions that he drift into like on a high, but it's not him doing things in the visions, it's someone else, even though it he can feel and see everything that goes on.
Things keep getting more and more strange, and one day he can feel himself having sex with a man, and see the man on top of him as well. But after that, when his mind looks into a mirror, he sees a naked female body, more beautiful than he have ever seen before. He understands that the visions he have seen comes from this gorgeous woman, and that he is somehow psychically linked to her. He decides to track her down, but if that was a wise choise or not is up to you to find out since I don't wanna spoil anything for potential viewers.
Ok, so I really enjoyed this psychically linked part, and that one doesn't get to see that it's a woman until later on. Early on whenever Jamie has a vision, it's just really weird, bizarre, and you really have no idea what's going on. Later though when he decides to track her down things take a different turn, and it all turns into a drama thriller with a bad ending to finish it off with.
It has no scares, and I really mean none, and that was too bad. On the other hand it had some humour that worked pretty well, and the basic idea itself is not bad at all. To its advantage, I must say that I pretty much got hooked right from the start, as it has some good feeling of mystery to it, and it's also accompanied with good pacing. The acting is good, but Jamie's friend and work colleague (Michael Curtola) were a bit pathetic, looking like some old dude who really wanted to be a young hip dude, and that just felt stupid. It's a pretty good story, it's a great idea, the movie looks slick and everything in it is basically pretty good except for the ending which bring everything else down a helluva lot. Plus that, it's not really a horror flick.
It's too bad that the ending sucked so much, because other than that it was more than decent. Also, the story was very interesting, and you easily got hooked by it. It's definitely worth seeing, but don't expect miracles, and if you want the outcome to be good, well, just turn it off before the end.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Chocolate
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Mick Garris
WRITING CREDITS: Mick Garris
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Henry Thomas, Michael Curtola, Lucie Laurier
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 60 min
RATING: 4/10
Masters of Horror (S01E05): Chocolate Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S01E05): Chocolate Trailer Click here
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