A. Zombie Reviews … Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Rating: PG-13 (mild adult language and violence)

Starring: Brandon Routh, Sam Huntington, Anita Briem, and Taye Diggs

 

Zombies, and vampires, and werewolves… oh hell.

Poking around the internet usually leads me to a few shining gems as far as zombie movies goes. This isn’t exactly a zombie movie, but yet another film that utilizes zombies in some fashion. Never one to discriminate against my fellow undead, I decided to give Dylan Dog: Dead of Night a chance.

The film follows a private detective, Dylan Dog, and his assistant Marcus as they are dragged back into the realm of the supernatural for a murder case. This isn’t Dylan’s first trip around the paranormal merry-go-round and his past quickly catches up to pay a visit as he uses old connections to investigate the death of his client’s father. Luckily he’s used to dealing with the dead, while working Marcus meets with the toothy side of a zombie and is turned, without losing an ounce of his sense of humor.

Apparently in the universe of the film there are two types of zombies, those who feed on humans and those who don’t. Zombies who abstain from flesh eat worms and other gross things to get necessary nutrition. They are somewhat frail and decay quicker than their flesh-eating counterparts. All of the zombie rules were run through pretty quickly after Marcus awakes in the morgue, conveniently run by a pair of the vegan-esque zombies. I’m glad to see that for once the undead aren’t the bad guys, but instead function as comedic relief and sidekicks. About time, if you ask me.

Despite Marcus’s undead state, he and Dylan go on to do their sleuth thing. They go toe to fang with vampires and werewolves, even taking on the mother of all zombies. Oh and insert random demon, because we didn’t have enough paranormal entities to keep track of. (I had to take notes, no kidding!)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night had a lot of potential. Unfortunately this movie suffered from casting problems. Actually, only one big, glaring problem… Routh as the jaded Dylan Dog. The character was written for someone at least ten years older. Unless there is a plot point, such as Dylan has an extended lifespan and only appears to be around 30, there’s no way to believe some of the dialog coming from his mouth. He talks of old times with the vampires and I can’t help but think, “What, you were chatting up vampires in your Pampers, dude?” If they’d tweaked the character I would have enjoyed Routh’s performance more. Instead it felt like he tried to do a bad Constantine impression.

I’m going to give Dylan Dog:Dead of Night three and three-quarter decaying feet out of five. Most of that goes to Sam Huntington for amusing me so much as a newly dead zombie. Brought back fond memories.