Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, clearly an attempt to spawn a new franchise, is like a Riley-era episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — as lifeless as the creatures it confusingly attempts to portray. None so more than our hero, the eponymous Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh), hero of Tiziano Sclavi’s wildly popular Italian comic series.
I won’t pretend to have read a single issue, but that’s OK, because most of the details and events of the comics go the way of Bubba in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Instead of chasing down creatures in London, Dylan’s been relocated to the bayous of Louisiana — which makes little to no sense since not a single blessed character has even the slightest of Cajun accents. I’m not sure what’s worse — bad “aw cher” drawling or completely avoiding the particular accents of a given locale — but it makes the film seem like a blatant attempt to capitalize on Big Easy as the nouveau Transylvania. But, hey, I’m sure Sclavi always threw around the term Truebloods when describing his vampires too. Gone too are Groucho and Inspector Bloch and most of the dark and surrealistic tones of the comics. But, hey, at least he still drives a beater Volkswagen and wears a black blazer, red collared shirt and blue jeans. For some of the movie.
