“Day Shift” treats its mix of action, comedy, and horror as an excuse to repeat those genres with lots of stuff you’ve seen and heard before. But the fun of this vampire movie is more about its charisma: it’s about Jamie Foxx gliding through a major action role (more than his part in Netflix’s previous “Project Power”), and a mighty cool Snoop Dogg wearing a big cowboy hat, later on hauling a vampire-killing machine gun named “Big Bertha.” And not for nothing, “Day Shift” is also the rare modern action movie that makes a meal out of its fight scenes.
Foxx plays a Los Angeles pool cleaner named Bud Jablonski, who is actually a vampire hunter that specializes in shooting, fighting, and taking the fangs from the city’s bloodsuckers (they’re worth good money). The movie’s title turns out to be some kind of curse, in that by leaning into how much of a job this is for Bud, it’s a drag for almost everything else. A day’s work involves vampire fang collector’s fees, union dues, crotchet bosses, etc. For as much fun as “Day Shift” can be, it also gets close to sucking all of the fun from its premise.
The film’s first action set-piece is a real calling card for debut filmmaker J.J. Perry, who has been a stunt man, stunt coordinator, and second unit director on some of Hollywood’s best action movies in the last two decades (“F9: The Fast Saga,” “John Wick,” “Blade,” etc.). Bud sneaks into an old woman’s apartment as if he were a one-man SWAT team. His hunt for this vampire turns into a living room-smashing brawl, in which the revealed predator doesn’t just boast spidery acrobatics, and a vicious thirst for blood but also a bendable spine. Perry used contortionists for the fight scene, and it makes for some excellent visuals when Bud tries to crush the vamp against the wall, only for them to accordion and bounce right back. It’s a moment like this that proves an interesting action director, and it also gives “Day Shift” a good jolt that it doesn’t always know what to do with.
After this formidable vamp-kicking action, “Day Shift” returns to its more hollow emotional core, which involves Bud’s duties as a father, which he has been failing (he and his wife are separated but not divorced). He’s late to pick up his daughter Paige for school—not the first time—and it’s this kind of momentum, paired with the expensive annoyance of braces, that gives his wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good in a thankless role) more reason to pack up and leave for Florida with her mother. “Day Shift” sets up its main problem using limp wrists: Bud has to make $10,000 in only a matter of days to pay for everything or his family is gone.
On the vampire side, Karla Souza plays a real estate agent who is buying up all of the land in the Valley and leading a terror campaign that soon collides with Bud’s work. Plus, she can navigate the daytime, unlike many of her fellow vamps. She’s an unfortunate example of intriguing casting for a bland character; it’s clear how much fun she is having with the role, but the script by Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten doesn’t reward that excitement enough.
“Day Shift” is the kind of action movie that gets less charming, and even annoying when it speaks for too long. Dialogue becomes the open door for cliches (Souza’s first villainous line is, “Do you know what the definition of insanity is?” Yawn.), and the vampire hunter rule-defining that doesn’t make all of the action more exciting, just dangerously boring. There are broad chunks of the script that are devoted to these weightless concepts, added to the generic bad-dad drama about Bud trying to not lose his family. Peter Stormare appears briefly as someone who deals in vampire teeth, and his role is practically swallowed whole by the script’s over-fixation with making sense of vampire hunting.
There’s little comic relief from all of this dry textbook talk, in part because its main comedy then comes from a character who lists off the rules, annoying Bud. This would be Dave Franco’s Seth, the resident gun-shy dweeb of “Day Shift.” In the story’s dull move of making a mismatched buddy cop duo, Seth just provides numerous opportunities for Bud to emasculate or dunk on him, while speaking about what is protocol and not.
“Day Shift” has more fun when showing you some action that you might have seen before, but not exactly like this. Perry’s experience with martial arts and stunts shines with fight sequences that both make vampire martial arts a real thing (such as in a busy suburban vamp safehouse, with action star Scott Adkins making a brief appearance) and also provide plenty of surprise hits and pay-offs. And it’s exciting too to see actors like Franco and Foxx twirl around and fight themselves, showing the commitment to the shots that keep us watching and not distracted by stunt doubles. As with the contortionist work, there’s always an invigorating emphasis in “Day Shift” on slamming bodies into walls or flipping them—making the over-the-top action look like it actually hurts—that gives Perry’s movie its needed adrenaline.
The story might play out like a missed opportunity in some ways, as it’s staggering that a movie in which Jamie Foxx fights vampires can be so set on killing its fun with backstory. But while the worst parts of “Day Shift” want to be cute with all of this, Perry’s movie is saved by the inner bad-ass that comes out when it matters most. [C+]
“Day Shift” is available now on Netflix.