Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

So, I have a little problem with sleep… as in it often eludes me. My girlfriend is usually in bed by 10pm every night which leaves me hanging around alone until usually 4:30am or so. I’m not sure if it’s insomnia, or if my circadian rhythm is all out of whack since I got laid off last year and the two part time jobs I now have to keep to make ends meet don’t require me to be up at the ass crack of dawn.

…anyway…

Whatever the case may be it leaves me with a lot of time to watch movies (and play WoW or Skyrim or Battlefield 3). The other night I wasn’t in a video game mood so I hit the Roku to see if there was anything to watch on Netflix. Rather than watching more Who I decided to watch Dylan Dog: Dead of Night.

Now, I remember seeing the trailer for this back when it came out in March of 2011 and thinking “Wow… that looks like an awful movie.” After having watched it I can now state, officially for the record, wow… that was an awful movie!

When I saw Superman returns I thought that Brandon Routh did the best he could with a horrible script. I remember thinking that he felt and looked so much like Christopher Reeve that I could forgive the ridiculous plot. In Dylan Dog it felt like Routh was barely trying to act at all. Dylan Dog offers a slightly comedic take on something that has been done before in movies like Constantine (2005) but with none of the visual style and appeal. I normally consider Keanu to be a pretty flat actor, but I have to give him mad props after watching some of the performances in Dylan Dog. Routh is boring and uninspired as the titular character, Taye Diggs is laughable as a villainous Vamp, and Dylan’s Zombie sidekick Marcus (played by Sam Huntington who was the Jimmy Olson to Routh’s Supes) was more whiny and annoying about his condition than he was entertaining and comedic. Even Peter Stormare, who was an awesome and creepy Satan in Constantine (and a most excellent German engineer) couldn’t be bothered to be a believable baddie.

**hooray for accidental alliteration**

The Noir voice-over (or rather the attempt at Noir voice-over) was painfully awful. Rather than utilizing the style as a subtle addition to the film it felt like it was drummed over my head and used to fill in all the plot holes that they couldn’t get around to via better writing, cinematography, and acting. As for the plot… well.. predictable doesn’t even begin to cover it.

All in all… this movie is bad. Just really, really bad. Avoid it. Unless you are a cinemasochist… in which case enjoy.

1 out of 5 “omg that’s bad”s