Where is Groucho? Where is the inspector Bloch? You know Dylan dog is vegetarian and hates the weapons? Is Dylan Dog not a freaking Power Ranger.

Dylan Dog comes out of a self imposed semi-retirement to solve a series of deaths that will cause a riff between the living and the undead.Without drawing comparisons to the excellent atmospheric Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) or the comics, Dylan Dog is an interesting monster mash-up in which Kevin Munroe offers some technically impressive effects as Dylan goes from one well dressed location and set to the next. Brandon Routh looks the part and is the archetype hero and does well with Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer's comedy script with it's Columbo-like twists. However, if Blade Runner (1982) has taught us anything it is that voice overs used inappropriately just take you out of the moment. While Donnelly and Oppenheimer try to make it work to give a noir feel it never works to the extent it should as the on screen atmosphere never matches Routh's soothing voice leaving it somewhat redundant. Routh is comfortable in the well staged action scenes, notable is Dylan's zombie sidekick Marcus played by Sam Huntington who generates most of the genuine funny absurdity. Taye Diggs and the great Peter Stormare are among the solid supporting cast.Although it never executes the required dark cutting humour successfully Munroe and the writers deliver some good cross sub-genre characters, body-parts and action setups but considering the budget it still is in the vein of an extended episode of Grimm, Sleepy Hollow or True Blood to name a few.Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is not bad, and it would be good to see Routh in the role again but it is not Dylan Dog. It's an entertaining crowd pleaser.

In previous years, Dylan Dog was an arbiter of all issues among undead parties; he was respected by all, and he helped keep the peace. Something went badly wrong, though, and now he is a private detective who investigates infidelity for the most part.A killing by a werewolf draws him back into the fray. The victim is Elizabeth's father, an importer (well, smuggler) of rare items. He is rumored to have an object of rare power which will change the balances among the undead factions.Elizabeth hires Dylan to find her father's killer, but the movie is about Dylan trying to circumvent an all out war among the undead. Along the way, we meet werewolves, vampires, zombies, and ghouls (humans who mainline on vampire blood for strength and youth).Much of the action is about finding the Heart of Belial, which is sufficient to bring back Belial himself, a demon of unsurpassed strength. Vargas wants to use Belial to put down all the other undead factions. Then again, so does someone else, which is an interesting twist.----Scores----Cinematography: 10/10 Always good. Sound: 10/10 Fine. The actors were well-miked, and the incidental music was good.Acting: 7/10 Anita Briem was really weak, but I enjoyed most of the other characters as played by Routh, Stormare, Angle, Huntington.Screenplay: 8/10 The story has a well-defined beginning, a long middle, and a conclusive ending. Exposition of motivation was fine. I read other reviews after seeing the film, and I'm glad I never looked at the comic of the same name. Most of the negative energy against the film seemed to arise from the fans of the comic.Special Effects: 8/10 Mostly good.

Maybe – most likely, even – I'm just a fatigue and endlessly grumbling horror fanatic, but personally I'm so sick and tired of allegedly cool & overly energetic comic book adaptations that put all sort of traditional horror themes together through a modern CGI-blender. The outcome of such a mix is hardly ever entertaining or originative, but more like boisterous, pretentious and derivative. For a very short while, I was actually very enthusiast to see "Dylan Dog", as I read that it was based on the work of the Italian comic book artist Tiziano Sclavi. This also just happens to be the inventor of "Dellamorte Dellamore"; one of the top five greatest zombie movies ever made and still one of the most shamefully underrated horror movies in the history of cinema. But then I realized again that comic book adaptations hardly ever make good films, and in most cases they barely reflect even a glimpse of the coolness of the original comic book. Sclavi's eccentric universe offers a whole lot of potential and terrific gimmicks, like first and foremost the New Orleans setting and the rather peculiar story aspect of monsters harmoniously existing together, and director Kevin Munroe ("TMNT") also tries hard to make his film accessible to all kinds of cinematic audiences, but the whole thing is just too damn derivative and reminiscent to other (also inferior) franchises like "Underworld", "Constantine", "Van Helsing", "Watchmen" and who knows what else. Brandon Routh, the new but unsuccessful Superman, depicts a different type of heroic character this time, as he's a supernatural detective and the human guardian of the peace-pact between the New Orleans' opposite monster clans. He's actually retired, as there haven't been any incidents for a while now, but the pact is rudely broken when a rich antique dealer is savagely killed by a lycanthrope of patriarch Gabriel's clan. The murder generates a bloody war with at stake an ancient religious relic holding the power to awaken an invincible demon named Belial. Along the process, Dylan's loyal assistant and comic relief character Marcus reluctantly transforms into a zombie and loses his limbs, and our private eye falls in love with the victim's daughter who clearly has a hidden agenda since the start. It's truly incomprehensible how a movie featuring so many versatile horror themes and monsters eventually results in such a dull and painfully clichéd wholesome. "Dylan Dog" doesn't feature a single highlight or memorable sequence and, on top of it all, director Munroe often reverts to rookie mistakes like the redundant narration and an overuse of comedy interludes at the expense of story coherence and/or atmosphere. The special and make-up effects, albeit plentiful, are too obviously computer engineered and hugely disrespectful towards admirers of old-fashioned horror lovers. I watched this film at the Brussels' Festival of Fantastic Films, during a midnight screening and in a theater chock-full of outrageous and hyperactive genre fanatics. The crowd's reactions were lukewarm and harsh. I guess that says enough about a film whose desperate aim is to be a crowd-pleaser