DAY SHIFT. (L to R) Dave Franco as Seth and Jamie Foxx as Bud in Day Shift. Cr. Parrish Lewis/Netflix © 2022
Courtney Howard // Film Critic
DAY SHIFT
Rated R, 1 hour 51 minutes
Directed by: J.J. Perry
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, Snoop Dogg, Karla Souza, Meagan Good, Scott Adkins, Steve Howey, Zion Broadnax, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Eric Lange
There’s very little action, scares or comedy that have any bite, let alone draw blood, in director J.J. Perry’s DAY SHIFT. This action-horror-comedy, centered on a pool-cleaner-cum-vampire-hunter whose attempts at getting back in good standing with his family and guild land him in a messy cleanup operation, holds the bare minimum of low-stakes thrills. And considering this comes from a graduate of the illustrious 87Eleven school of stuntmen-turned-filmmakers (the likes of which have brought us JOHN WICK, ATOMIC BLONDE and BULLET TRAIN), a majority of the action-driven spectacle lacks the gut-punching, stinging slap of innovative concepts that would complement and enhance the genres it clearly seeks to celebrate.
Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) is used to cleaning up messes – mainly his own. He may look like an average pool guy servicing the larger San Fernando Valley in his beat-up Chevy pickup and relaxed Hawaiian shirts, only he’s anything but. He’s a vampire hunter, seeking to make a pretty penny off the fangs of the creatures of the night, many of whom haunt the Valley enclaves of Reseda, Northridge and Glendale. He’s also a caring father to precocious 10-year-old daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax) and an ex-husband to long-suffering ex-wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good), who informs him they’ll have to move unless he scrapes together $10K in 7 days for living expenses.
The fear of losing those near and dear inspires Bud to ingratiate himself back in with his disciplinarian boss Seeger (Eric Lange) and buddy Big John (Snoop Dogg) at the Los Angeles Vampire Hunters Guild. However, there’s a catch: during this probation period, pencil-pushing union rep Seth (Dave Franco) must chaperone him while out in the field. And for the rogue loose cannon, doing things by-the-book isn’t on his books. The pair are teamed up to hunt down Audrey (Karla Souza, the lone performer who understood the assignment, making a meal of her bafflingly limited screen time), the vampy, campy purveyor of a special sunscreen which allows bloodsuckers to move about freely during daylight hours. She’s got big plans to take over the Valley operations, bringing together the vast sects of vamps – and she’s got a personal vendetta against Bud to settle.
Instead of featuring a streamlined, swift narrative replete with character-defining action and uproariously funny scenarios that all feed into the dramatic drive, screenwriters Shay Hatten and Tyler Tice bog it down with repetitive exposition that undermines our intelligence and stale jokes that rarely garner laughs (yes, there’s TWILIGHT jokes). A few scenes could stand to be excised altogether, particularly ones that don’t move the story forward and have no impact whatsoever. Those in contention all involve goofing on Seth unwittingly finding himself in shenanigans, pissing himself (the film’s long-running gag) or going through a more drastic change altogether. While it’s semi-entertaining to see Snoop Dogg hauling a sub-atomic machine gun called “Big Bertha,” plowing down hordes of vampires without breaking a sweat, it tangibly feels like an idea that would’ve landed better 22 years ago in a better written film.
Not much of its construction – narrative or otherwise – materializes as original or inventive. The car pursuit with motorbikes in the Los Angeles aqueduct doesn’t hold a candle to TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY’s similar sequence. The vampire hunter agency headquarters are reminiscent of MEN IN BLACK’s inner-workings and design, only it’s a bank, instead of a minimalistic, futuristic office. The gum trick where a character spits a wad of used gum into another character’s mouth seems inspired by Jackie Chan’s gum tricks in ARMOUR OF GOD, only a less ingenious homage. The sloppy introduction of Bud’s love interest Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) induces eye-rolls and groans as we can immediately predict her motivations. Worse, there’s no character growth exhibited by Bud on this ensuing journey. Seth inherently changes, but there’s little to no arc for Bud.
In addition to the gags and conflicts flailing rather than flying, the aesthetics are also off-putting, adopting a putrid color palette of sallow, tawny orange and over-saturated cyan, which does a disservice to the actors’ skin tones and bestows the picture with a manufactured, phony texture, growing worse as the run time ticks away. The majority of its big action set pieces also come up short, delivering generically conceived and conceptualized fights, showcasing choreography that gets recycled in every fight sequence. Vampires contorting their bodies as if they’re Cirque du Soleil performers fails to summon gasps or pleasure. The lone, halfway decent propulsive action scene is where Bud, Seth and their competition, the Nazarian Brothers (played by action superstar Scott Adkins and Steve Howey), work together to eliminate a hive house. It’s busting with lively electricity, plenty of clever kills and bombast (a loose bullet from one gun is caught, mid-air, in the chamber of another as the recipient does a backflip).
With a little more effort and a few more script passes, this could’ve been a newfangled FRIGHT NIGHT, which held the right amount of seductive allure and fun frights to be bloody buoyant. As is, Netflix’s offering never shakes the feeling of being content for content’s sake. Though it may fit a certain audience’s algorithm, it’s hard to imagine it suiting anyone’s tastes nor satiating their bloodlust. This one sucks.
Grade: D+
DAY SHIFT begins streaming exclusively on Netflix on August 12.
