In the past few years, Hollywood has churned out movie after movie that is either based on a comic book, or filled with vampires or zombies.
With that in mind, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night must have seemed like a dream come true; a movie (very loosely) based on a beloved Italian comic filled with (you guessed it) vampires, zombies, and werewolves. Add to that the casting of Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) in the title role, and Dylan Dog seems like a fairly safe bet to pull in some viewers and make the studio some money.
What you end up with, unfortunately, is not only one of the biggest flops of 2011, but also a cliche ridden film with zero personality and that exists as nothing more than an empty shell of the comic its based upon, while ripping off some much better comic-related films along the way.
Dylan Dog is introduced to us as a private eye, making his living on exploiting the faults and misdeeds of others, all the while spouting out the most groan-worthy one-liners one may ever come across. After her father is murdered by what seems to be a werewolf, a young woman (Anita Briem) hires Dylan after finding one of his old business cards from his original profession; paranormal investigator. It’s here that Dylan explains that not only werewolves exist, but so do vampires and zombies. These various creatures of the night apparently choose to allow one human to “police” them and any issues that come up within their regular going’s-on, and, until the death of someone close to him, Dylan was that human.
Dylan initially refuses to help the woman, claiming he’s long left that life behind, but after his cringe-inducing sidekick Marcus (Sam Huntington) is bitten and killed by a zombie, thus returning him to life as a zombie, Dylan decides to take the case. As the case unravels, the trail leads to a run-in with the local vampires, “Truebloods” as they are called (seriously?), and their leader Vargas (Taye Diggs) and the plot just continues to spiral out of control from there, one bad one-liner after another.
To say that Dylan Dog is a bad movie is to be polite. It truly boggles the mind that a film based off of a comic that has been around over 25 years with a wealth of stories to pull from would be saddled with being anything but original. Whereas the comic used horror as a form of social commentary, the movie plays it by the numbers where every twist offers no surprise and every story beat leads exactly where you think it will.
That’s not t say the film suffers merely for not being more faithful to the book. There are plenty of adaptations that use liberties with its base material that truly succeed (X-Men: First Class comes to mind), but when following the comic would have provided at least some since of coherency, it comes off rather poorly to have ignored as completely as the filmmakers did.
It’s also a poor showing for Routh. I’ve liked him in everything I’ve seen him in, but under closer scrutiny, he has consistently played characters with little to no personality. That’s worked fine in other roles, but here the character of Dylan demands some personality, especially considering how much of the film is narrated by the character. Unfortunately, Routh comes off stilted and seems like he is having just as hard of a time saying the dialogue as the viewer will upon hearing it.
Marcus, Dylan’s sidekick, is even worse. Portraying the reluctant zombie, Marcus comes off as unbearably annoying and you truly wish he had just stayed dead and never returned.
The only actor breathing even a little bit of life into this film is Diggs. As Vargas, he does a decent job of filling the bad guy slot, although he does have his moments of over-acting, but it’s pretty forgivable seeing as how it’s nice to see anyone in the film acting at all.
The only other bright spot, if there is indeed more than one, is some of the creature designs. Although cheap FX and makeup show up more often than not, there are some pretty impressive effects and design aesthetic used to bring some of the creatures to life. I’m a sucker for anyone continuing to use practical effects, and Dylan Dog does have some good use of this slowly declining trade.
High-Def Presentation
Dylan Dog comes to Blu-ray with a 1080p/ MPEG-4 AVC encode that serves the film well, but is not without its issues. The look of the film is dark and filled with blues and greens that set a good mood, but the picture at times falls way to dark and image definition gets lost. The movie was shot on 35mm and retains much of its “film” look, which means there is often grain present, sometimes overbearingly and completely ruining the image. All of this is rather surprising considering the film was made less than a year ago, but with as bad as the movie bombed, it makes since that Fox wouldn’t dump more money into it.
One of the very few bright spots on this Blu-ray is the audio. With a 5.1 DTS-HD track, the film makes great use of all the speakers, spreading ambient noise and chatter around the room while keeping dialogue sharp, focused and clear. There does seem to be a bit of unevenness whenever the soundtrack kicks in, almost blowing out the rest of the mix.
Beyond The Feature
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No behind the scenes looks, no comparison’s to the beloved comic it borrows its name from. There isn’t even a trailer. With as little love as this release has received from Fox, I’m genuinely surprised they even bothered to release it at all.
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is beyond being simply a bad film, it’s truly a waste of time. Anything you could find in this film that has any worth has been done before and beyond better. Fox doesn’t care about this film, and frankly, neither should you.
– Matt Hardeman
Shop for Dylan Dog: Dead of Night on Blu-ray for a discounted price at Amazon.com.
