Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Loosely based on a popular Italian comic, this noirish supernatural thriller stars Brandon Routh as the titular New Orleans PI once designated to keep the peace between the werewolves and vampires comprising a large segment of the population. Although Dog shifted to more mundane cases after the death of his girlfriend during one of his paranormal adventures, he's dragged back into his old life after being hired to look into a murder. Sam Huntington, who played Jimmy Olsen to Routh's Man of Steel in Superman Returns, costars as Dog's hapless assistant Marcus, who's turned into a zombie. The investigation proves to be complicated, involving a vampire kingpin (Taye Diggs) who runs a glitzy nightclub, and a werewolf (Peter Stormare) who owns a meat-packing business, as well as small armies of minions on both sides (along with various CGI monsters and a mysterious antique that's the MacGuffin in the plot). Dylan Dog is visually stylish, favoring splashes of bright, garish color against a dark, glossy background, but it's also episodic, cramming too many twists into the mix—which leads to reams of explanatory voiceover narration by Routh that strives to be clever but is mostly groan-inducing. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)