Contains spoilers.
I really wanted to really
like director Kevin Munroe's comic-book inspired crime-noir b-movie
horror-comedy-thriller. A vast and complex web of vampires, werewolves and
zombies all hidden in plain sight, ancient tensions and a fragile peace held in
a precarious and perpetual balance, and a broken, disillusioned private
investigator the only person with both the knowledge and will to redeem himself
and hold it all together. It's all there. Underworld, Blade, Buffy, True Blood; even
Twilight (ok maybe stretching it) found a way, and with the rich and abundant source material (Tiziano Sclavi's 80 odd Italian comics), and the budget to
make it happen, it should be have been easy. Now I'm not going to make
the case that Dead of Night is a bad film; far from, it; but as a woefully
missed opportunity, I'll call it now. And what makes it worse and me genuinely
quite angry is its problems are all its own making.
Cheesy crime-noir
atmosphere with narration, a recognisable actor in Bradon Routh (Superman
Returns and Ray Palmer / Atom in the DC comic reboots) as Dylan Dark and a
fairly dark jumpy death discovery and werewolf encounter. Things actually start
pretty well; the characters are interesting and the drip fed unveiling of the
underworld engaging. We learn about New Orleans, as the undead Mecca, of
werewolves that can control their transformation and of the vampire hierarchy and
their subtle control of the vulnerable with the misuse of their blood as a
narcotic. It's a world within the world with a rich history and complex
dynamics; and the death of a local importer by an undead, and the bringing in
of Dylan as lead investigator by his daughter Elizabeth (Anita Briem) has all
the clans and tribes on edge.
As said, it all
sounds good? So what went wrong? Two things. I first started having doubts when
the zombies were introduced. While the set-up wasn't the most dark and macabre cinema I've yet watched it was still edgy, sombre and believable. With the death of Dylan's best
friend Marcus (Sam Huntington) and his subsequent reintroduction I was soon to
learn that in Dead of Night zombies were to directly equate to goofy
light-relief, and nothing more. Now I understand that the film was also a bit of a comedy, and
some of the gags were successful, but whether it's zombie cleaning regiments,
zombie support groups, zombie cuisine or chop shops, it's as if the writers
were given a bumper book of zombie jokes for Christmas and no one at any point
told them they shouldn't try and include all of them. The humour becomes ultimately distracting and the sheer quantity of farce threatens to overwhelm all the other elements that were teased.
Which brings us on
to the second main reason I think it unravelled the longer it went on. Last year I finished Tell
Tales' The Wolf Among Us. It's another crime-noir with witches, vampires and
werewolves and a less than perfect lone man trying to keep the peace. It's story was intricate
and engaging and most importantly full of twists, surprises and nuance; and
quite the opposite of what Dead of Night eventually becomes. Dead of Night has a cookie-cutter approach
to story with every plot and sub-narrative playing out exactly as you think it will. An intriguing story is
set-up then it's as if the writers and director hadn't planned in any detail
what they'd do, so drop the mystery from the murder, resort to cliché vampire /
zombie / werewolf scenes as if working from a tick sheet hoping the zombie
gag show will save them. It's all rather a hodgepodge of albeit sometimes good, extraneous ideas that culminates in a grand finale that fails in to deliver either
a surprise or any real satisfaction.
As stated and not
quite as intended maybe Dylan Dog: Dead of Night inadvertently becomes more of
a zombie comedy sketch show, than a vampire,
werewolf or undead hard-boiled movie. The zombies are dead but they're
still exactly as they were though now rotting and rather more foul smelling.
They can only eat human flesh and maggots though as cognisant and still with
conscience they generally tend for the latter and as there's quite the active
secret and lively social scene with jobs and help available being a zombie is
more an inconvenience than a state of being. That is of course as long as you don't let it slide. One of
the more intriguing ideas is that without due care and attention it can all slide Walking Dead, gnarly, and mindless flesh eating even with the additional predilection for zombie
flesh. It's only briefly played with but from a zombie perspective an
interesting one; again though as part of a whole film it was fun but was it really necessary or integral?
Maybe I'm being too
harsh and maybe what Dead of Night suffers from was simply trying too hard; showing us
too many things, playing with too many ideas with the consequence of seeing the narrative forced to
accommodate, and dumbed down as a result. What we do have is a story of murder,
betrayal and grand if twisted motives, which if extracted and looked at with a
critical eye would unfortunately be found lacking in coherence, imagination and
intelligence. Of course all this of course wasn't helped by, if I'm honest,
quite the wooden one dimensional performance from a lead I thought at first
would be ideally suited, and whilst it takes quite a lot for me to actually
call out an actor, such is his and disinterested demeanour and forced chemistry
with both Elizabeth and Brandon, he actually makes the film worse just by
being in it. A real missed opportunity, but not a wholly bad film; Mr Dog certainly deserved more though - 5/10.
Steven@WTD.
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