Dylan Dog: Dead of Night - Blu-ray Review

3.2 Stars (out of 5)

Synopsis

Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) stars as Dylan Dog, a supernatural detective who will go where the living dare not — facing friend and foe alike in the monster infested backstreets of New Orleans. Armed with an edgy wit and an arsenal of silver and wood-tipped bullets, Dylan must solve a series of murders before an epic war ensues between his werewolf, vampire and zombie clients. Based on one of the world's most popular comic books (over 60 million copies sold), this inventive horror comedy will slay you with humor and genuine frights. Buy Now $19.99

Starring:

Brandon Routh, Sam Huntington, Peter Stormare, Taye Diggs, Anita Briem, Kurt Angle, Kimberly Whalen, Courtney J. Clark, Randal Reeder

Director:

Kevin Munroe

Blu-ray Release Date:

July 26, 2011

Subtitles:

English SDH, Spanish

Rating

Overall rating weighted as follows:
Audio 40%, Video 40%, Special Features 20%, Movie - its just our opinion so take it with a grain of salt

Audio 4.0 Stars (out of 5)

Dolby and DTS Demo Discs used as basis for comparison
●        Subwoofer – 4.5 Stars
●        Dialog – 4.0 Stars
●        Surround Effects – 3.5 Stars
●        Dynamic Range – 4.0 Stars

English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Dylan Dog has a decent audio performance that helps bring the action to life. Low frequencies are handled well, and deliver every punch and gunshot with deep heft. Fights also feature enough bass to rumble the couch. Surrounds are not used as often as I would like, but they’re noticeable during certain action sequences and make you believe monsters are growling right behind you. Ambient sounds are used every once in a while to bring the vampire club alive with crowd chatter, and footsteps in the distance. Overall I would just call it’s performance as above average.

Video 3.9 Stars (out of 5)

Spears & Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray Edition used as basis for comparison
●        Color Accuracy  - 4.0 Stars
●        Shadow detail – 4.0 Stars
●        Clarity – 3.0 Stars
●        Skin tones – 4.0 Stars
●        Compression – 4.5 Stars

Codec: MPEG-4 AVC, Resolution: 1080p, Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, Original Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1

When I looked at the cover for this movie, I was shocked to see it was a single layer Blu-ray and only had 25 gigabytes. However, that did not seam to hider the video quality much. Colors are warm and shadows are so dark that details are sometimes lost. An orange tint is noticeable throughout the film and makes skin tones have bronze golden hue making everyone look like they are from the Jersey Shore. Film grain in very high but it seams to suit the tone of the movie. The weakest link of this video presentation is the clarity. Things look pretty good during close-ups, but then the camera pulls back things get fuzzy. It’s bad enough to look like it was just DVD quality.   

Bonus Features 0.0 Stars (out of 5)

●        There are no extras on this Blu-ray. None.

Movie – 2.0 Stars (out of 5)

Review

I have a soft spot for comedy horror films; Zombieland is one of my favorites. Dylan Dog looked like it could be a fun movie. It’s based on a Italian comic book, and stars Superman Returns’ Brandon Routh. This should be a decent bet right? Boy was I wrong. As I watched the first scene and realized it had the production and direction similar to a weekly teen TV show, I knew I had to try to like it. The plot was a little more convoluted than it should have been, and only some of the actors did a good job. Unfortunately, the movie’s hero Branden Routh, was one of the bad performances and it was sad to see Superman is such a sad affair. Throughout the whole film Routh narrates, by the end of the film I was sick of him. Not because of bad narration, but because the dialog was so painfully corny. It seams like they tried to make a noire detective film, but ending up making a modern day Van Helsing and failed at that too.

There are some good aspects of the movie. I really like their take on zombies, and how they have to maintain rotting body parts. Dylan’s sidekick does a decent job of being the film’s comic relief. Wow, it expected the list of good things to be longer.