But despite the presence of those elements, the darker atmosphere of Justice League Dark still feels like more of a desperate plea to be seen as hip and cool rather than something organically flowing from the story itself. This is especially apparent in the opening scenes, which establish the phenomenon of ordinary citizens suddenly seeing everyone around them as menacing demons, which leads them to killing everyone in sight. We get to see a mother attempt to drop her newborn baby off a building before committing suicide herself, a father holding a shotgun to his family and a shed full of dead bodies. Who are the ones investigating these heinous acts of violence? Why, the Justice League of course!
These gruesome crimes are discussed at the Hall Of Justice, which means brief appearances by Aquaman and Hawkman in their comic book outfits. To put it gently, it's so jarring to see freaking Hawkman showing up in close proximity to the sort of gruesome murder investigation that wouldn't have been out of place in the first season of Hannibal. Luckily, this particular example of the tonal dissonance between combining the lighter elements of the DC Universe and the violence-soaked plotline of this actual movie don't last too long, since we soon meet the various mystical heroes the feature focuses on.
Our lead is John Constantine (Matt Ryan, reprising his role from the short-lived Constantine TV show), who is called upon to investigate this phenomenon and subsequently teams up with Zatanna (Camilla Luddington), Deadman (Nicholas Turturro) and....Batman (Jason O'Mara), because we can't do anything in DC Comics films anymore without Batman showing up. Despite the likes of Matt Ryan (who actually is a solid Constantine, I can see why he keeps getting re-hired for this part) and Camilla Luddington doing game vocal performances, none of these characters are all that interesting in their depictions here.
Constantine as a character may be the biggest problem, since he's the kind of highly intelligent and experienced but also a total jerk archetype we've seen countless times before. He's a pretty boring individual all things considered and the rest of the mystical individuals he teams up with similarly fail to leave an impression. Both Constantine and all the characters in the movie also get saddled with some clunky dialogue that's heavily peppered with forced one-liners ("Swamp-Thing has left the building!" and "500 is the new 300!" are the worst of the bunch) whose reason for existing eludes me. At least the script finds some occasional fun ways to utilize the unique power sets of its magic/occult-based superheroes, particularly with Deadman, whose ability to put his spirit into living people's bodies comes in mighty handy.
The animation here serves as an improvement over the previous DC Animated feature, Batman: The Killing Joke, probably because Justice League Dark isn't straining to mimic Brian Bolland's iconic illustrations. Still, the characters movements still feel stiff and occasionally don't feel like they belong to the backgrounds they're inhabiting. To boot, some of the pieces of magic seen (particularly the spells Felix Faust casts) feel like they came straight out of the Doctor Strange movie while a sludge monster that attacks a hospital seems to have wandered off from the set of Spirited Away. Even with all that being said, the serviceable animation may be the high point (along with an extraneous but at least fun brief appearance by Swamp-Thing) of the otherwise pretty forgettable Justice League Dark.
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