Netflix’s Day Shift is exactly the kind of movie that you think it will be. Except that it’s kind of worse. You wouldn’t think it was possible, but this is a vampire hunting movie that stars Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, and Snoop Dogg that somehow feels flat. I’m still trying to figure out how director J.J. Perry pulled that off.
The action is decent. The horror is alright. And the comedy is… well, it’s there. But Day Shift, which tries to go for that Big Trouble in Little China vibe, isn’t quite as irreverent, or as quirky enough.
Uber Vampires, Eastern Vampires, Spider Vampires… Oh My!
Day Shift tells the story of Bud (Jamie Foxx), a vampire hunter who’s fallen out of favour with the local vampire hunting union and has to work off book to make ends meet. He has a wife he’s no longer with and a daughter that he’s supposed to help with. When Bud finds out that his family are about to move away because they can no longer afford to live in sunny, expensive LA, he figures that he needs to make some big bucks, and quick in order to keep them around.
So Bud asks his friend, respected (and loved?) vampire hunting union member Big John (Snoop Dogg), to get him into the union’s good graces so he can earn some good rates for the vampires he kills. The union agrees to bring him back into the fold on probation, but has to be chaperoned by a rep (Dave Franco), whose job it is to ensure he stays within their regulations. While all this is happening, we’re also introduced to the villain of the piece, Audrey, an Uber vampire who is trying to recapture their glory years and usurp humanity at the top of the food chain.
Day Shift isn’t terrible. It is however just barely above boring. The biggest problem with Day Shift is that it isn’t fun. Fun can be many things. Fun doesn’t mean a movie has to be funny. But funny is the easiest way to make a movie fun. John Wick is fun without being funny. Nobody is fun without being funny. Bullet Train is another perfect example. Does a movie need to be fun to be good? No of course not. 1917 is a great movie that isn’t fun. Dune is a great movie without being fun or funny.
Now, when you have a cast like Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, and Snoop Dogg, it should be hard to make a movie that is neither fun nor funny. Or so you would think.
Boom! Boom! Splat (?)
The problems with Day Shift is that it feels like a stunt team’s movie. Scott Adkins (who is in this movie), is an accomplished stuntman who also makes B-grade action movies that are all about action and not necessarily about story. These movies are less concerned with story arcs and character growth. It’s a lot like porn, but you know, for action movies. Sure there is a story, but the audience isn’t really there for the acting.
Day Shift is also directed by a stunt coordinator. J.J. Perry is a very experienced stuntman and second unit director with an admirable resume. However, unlike John Wick’s stunt coordinator-turned-director Chad Stahelski, Perry wasn’t given as good a material to work with.
In some ways, Day Shift feels like it could have been, or maybe even should have been, a series. There are story elements teased here that seem interesting (Uber/Spider/Eastern/Southern vampires, an international union of vampire hunters, vampire hunting as an underground blue collar career), and could have been fleshed out more over the course of a short series. There is potential in the story that Day Shift has set up, with rival vampire hunting crews, and international unions doing their own vampire hunting around the world. Unfortunately Day Shift didn’t do enough to convince me that we’ll be seeing any more of this. And just like that other Jamie Foxx movie, we’ll have forgotten about this in about two weeks.
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