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Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

A movie directed by Kevin Munroe

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He Gets All the Post-Mortem Cases

  • May 3, 2011
Rating:
+2
Star Rating:


Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is one of those movies that must have sounded great on paper – a horror comedy about a private detective whose clients are zombies, werewolves, and vampires. Indeed, there was the potential for it to be a lot of fun. It was all wasted, I’m sorry to say. Adapted from Tiziano Sclavi’s Italian comic book series Dylan Dog (completely unread by me), the film is a classic case of skimping in some areas, namely plot and character development, and overcompensating in others, namely monster effects and its sense of humor. Strange that I should say that, since (a) the monster effects are cheap and all but blurred by shadows and choppy editing, and (b) apart from a couple of amusing sight gags, the movie isn’t all that funny. And here I was hoping director Kevin Munroe would redeem himself after his previous effort, the God-awful CGI reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. No such luck.
 
The title character is essentially a throwback to the hardboiled private eyes of yesteryear detective novels and noir thrillers, made especially clear with his voiceover narrations. This could have worked were it not for the casting of Brandon Routh, who simply doesn’t look the part. His face is too soft and youthful. His build is too hunky. There’s no real sense that he’s channeling the PI archetype – the cigarette-smoking, hard-drinking, cynical, wisecracking tough guy – which would require him to be a bit rough around the edges. Who would have been a better choice? Someone a little older, a little less handsome, a little more world-weary. Perhaps Daniel Craig. Or maybe even Matt Damon. Both have played some variation of a detective, and to much greater success. Granted, neither James Bond nor Jason Bourne had to deal with things that go bump in the night.

                                              
                                                
For something that involves monsters and the undead, it’s surprising how uninteresting and hard to follow the film is. Taking place in New Orleans, we find Dylan Dog, who was at one time a respected intermediary between everyday people and underworld creatures of myth and horror movies. Apparently, they’re not all bad guys; many of them just want to live their lives, as mortals do. Since the untimely death of his girlfriend, Dylan has retired from supernatural casework and has transitioned to humdrum fraud and affair investigations. But then he’s approached by a woman named Elizabeth (Anita Briem), whose father was viciously murdered by a werewolf. He reluctantly takes the case when his assistant, Marcus Adams (Sam Huntington), is murdered in a similar fashion. As he delves deeper into the mystery, he will cross paths with a clan of werewolves, who run a meat-packing plant, and a vampire named Vargas (Taye Diggs), who owns a nightclub and pushes vampire blood as the newest drug for humans.
 
Marcus was murdered, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in the story. At the morgue – which, incidentally, has two zombies employed as medical examiners – he comes to with a start, and realizes to his horror that his intestines are all but gone and that his left arm is missing. Dylan explains the ins and outs of zombie maintenance, such as giving up human food for worms and replacing soap, makeup, and toothpaste with Ajax, Windex, and bleach. It’s because of Marcus that we’re given two scenes that are actually amusing. The first takes place in a body shop acting as a front for ... a body shop, a place where zombies from all over the east coast can replace organs and appendages that have rotted or fallen off. Marcus is soon supplied with a new African American arm. The second takes place at a zombie support group. Hey, zombies have feelings too.

                                              
                                                
An undead sidekick is admittedly a funny idea. Unfortunately, Marcus is written as a perpetually exasperated goofball, and he’s given sarcastic dialogue that borders on the Chandler-esque. He should be engaging, but he’s just plain annoying. It doesn’t help that the character operates under needlessly confusing zombie rules. Why is it, for example, that some people rise from the dead and others simply ... die? If Marcus can come back, why not Dylan’s old girlfriend? Since it seems that death doesn’t prevent anyone from leading normal lives, I guess there’s no longer any need for cemeteries. (Note: The fact that I’m applying logic to a horror movie isn’t a good sign.)
 
Now here’s the strange thing. Although there is a noticeable lack of coherency, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is both cliché and predictable, especially as it enters nears the final scenes. In other words, I didn’t much understand what was going on, but I don’t think I missed anything. Everything else is a grab bag of little things that bugged me. There will, for example, inevitably be sexual tension between Dylan and Elizabeth, even though they have absolutely no chemistry together. And what detective story would be complete without a McGuffin? As Dylan learns more about Elizabeth’s father, he begins a search for an ornate silver cross, one that contains the blood of a what I think is some kind of demon. I honestly can’t recall the specifics. It doesn’t matter – no one thought to make this movie memorable.

                                                  

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May 04, 2011
Excellent review, I will wait for the rental.
 
May 03, 2011
Nice review. I liked this a bit more than you did, but it does have its share of major issues and flaws. My main problem with it was like you, I felt Routh was a miscast (nope he didn't fit the role, tho I have yet to read the source material) and it was just too light for a movie. Nothing much really happens that it felt like an episode of a series (too cheap) and yet it was too polished for a b-movie. As for Dylan's GF, she died on overdose on vampire blood in the club (I have to recheck and I am not sure how the rules go though, but the zombie juggernaut was on vampire blood that gave it a monstrous appearance and extra-normal strength), and Marcus came back because he was bitten by a zombie, this may explain why she couldn't come back. I suppose I like the clever ideas behind the story more than the film as a whole. Yeah, I wished that this was done a little more seriously with more expensive production values.
May 03, 2011
I'm not sure a story like this could be told "seriously," not even a little bit. What I really wanted was an engaging, understandable plot, better dialogue, and a better cast. I don't think Routh is a bad actor, he just wasn't right for this particular role.
May 03, 2011
Yeah, Routh is alright as an actor, it was just that he had that super-model-like physique where I thought the character was supposed to be rough and dirty. (saw illustrations of Dylan). This definitely can be better with a bigger budget.
 
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More Dylan Dog: Dead of Night reviews
review by . May 01, 2011
posted in Movie Hype
A Clever Little Low-Budget Occult-Horror-Comedy That Proves Quite Competent and Fun!
It is a well-known fact that I am a reviewer who has a fondness for low-budget horror movies and I can tolerate movies that have cheesy special effects as long as it matches a clever grim humor around a film’s premise. I also love comic books and mature graphic novels as long as they have little marketing gimmicks behind them. Well, seems like “Dylan Dog: Dead of Night” meets most of the requirements of a cheesy B-movie flick and it sure does feel more polished than what I had …
review by . May 05, 2011
posted in Movie Hype
Dylan Dog is one of those films that feels like it was made in the 90s, and had at some point probably aired on Sci-Fi (before it became Syfy) and had a large enough following to have a small indie production company offer it a limited theatrical release.  The actors are your typical sci-fi "studs" circa now... and could have just been an added episode to the Being Human series that is now airing on the network.  Granted Sam Huntington is playing a zombie named Marcus in …
review by . August 22, 2011
posted in Movie Hype
Half a star out of ****     There are so many problems with "Dylan Dog: Dead of Night" on first sight; one of them being the PG-13 rating. Can you truly make a successful horror comedy with such a rating? I mean, Sam Raimi did it very well with "Drag Me to Hell", but that's Raimi we're talking about. He is a master of the horror comedy; and it was a return to form. But "Dylan Dog", an adaptation of the long-running Italian comic-book series of the same name, is so bland and contains …
see all Dylan Dog: Dead of Night reviews (4)
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Growing up a shy kid in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles, Chris Pandolfi knows all about the imagination. Pretend games were always the most fun for him, especially on the school playground; he and his … more
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Details

Director: Kevin Munroe
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Release Date: 29 April 2011 (USA)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
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"An Occult-Horror-Comedy About Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies!!"
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