‘Chocolate’
Season 1, Episode 5
Directed by Mick Garris
Written by Mick Garris
Masters of Horror is an anthology TV series created by Mick Garris which first aired on the Showtime network in 2005. Each episode is a stand alone one hour film, directed by a master horror director. Masters of Horror ran for two seasons and is available on DVD. In Fear and Loathing, Vivid Scribe takes a look at each episode in this series.
‘Chocolate’ is the tale of, Jamie (Henry Thomas – the kid from E.T) a food scientist who suddenly starts to experience the senses of a mysterious woman – everything she sees, hears, tastes and feels. And this includes her having sex, and her murdering her lover. The story is told as a flashback form as a blood soaked Jamie is being interrogated for a murder and we follow Jamie’s weird experiences waiting to see how the two are connected. And that’s ultimately what this episode adds up to, waiting to see how it will play out. The plot isn’t really that interesting and is even quite contradictory in parts.
Jaime, divorced and lonely, is on a health kick and it’s after he splurges out and eats some fancy chocolate that he forms the link with this mysterious woman. He pieces together clues he glimpses through her eyes, (all very conveniently, I’ll add) tracks her down and gets all caught up in this obsessive psycho-sexual situation. A lot of the plot feels like arbitrary padding, especially in Jamie’s work and personal life. So perhaps it’s all meant to demonstrate he’s an empty lonely guy (though apparently has no trouble in hooking up with random hot women in the supermarket) which is why he gets so obsessed with the lives connected to his visions, what he sees as full lives. I just feel though that all of this time spent padding could have been better spent developing a stronger plot. Developed characters are important yes, but in a short film format such as Masters of Horror, the situation and the story must be paramount.
‘Chocolate’ is the least horror of all of the Masters of Horror episodes to this point in the series. Sure, there’s murder and there’s blood but it’s all rather tame and not even remotely horrific. Rather, this episode feels more like a piece of science fiction and would have perhaps been more at home on something like The Outer Limits (1995-2002). Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just seems out of place among its far superior fellow MoH episodes.
Ultimately, ‘Chocolate’ is the least impressive Masters of Horror in the series to this point, which is a shame as I had hoped for more from an instalment written and directed by Masters of Horror Overlord, Mick Garris.
Kate Krake
