The central idea behind Netflix's Day Shift is a good one: vampire hunting is a 9 to 5 job complete with a union that offers up benefits and other perks for being a member. Think of it as a more blue-collar take on something like Men in Black, where taking on the extraordinary is just a way to make a living. There are a lot of opportunities to make this idea work in a movie, and Day Shift wastes every single one of them.
Directed by J.J. Perry and written by Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten (with first-timer Tice also receiving a story credit), Day Shift does everything in its power to squander the goodwill of its central conceit. For every little bit of worldbuilding (which itself often goes a little too far) and admittedly solid action, there are way too many juvenile jokes and inexplicable plot points to ignore.
Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) is a Los Angeles everyman whose pool cleaning business is just a front for his real job: hunting vampires. However, unlike something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is no "greater good" being fought for. The motivation behind Bud's quest is simply to get paid. However, Bud has been kicked out of the union for repeated violations, so must sell his collected fangs for a paltry amount to an independent buyer (played by Peter Stormare, who deserved a much larger role).
Bud's wife, from whom he is separated, is threatening to move his daughter to Florida unless Bud can come up with $10,000 in a week to pay for private school and braces. Facing a ticking clock and a near-impossible task, Bud manages to rejoin the union with the help of his friend Big John (Snoop Dogg, who is an icon but not a good actor by any stretch), under the condition that he be accompanied in the field by a union rep, Seth (Dave Franco). As all of this is going on, a powerful vampire (Karla Souza) seeks out revenge on Bud for killing one of her own.
There's something truly disappointing about watching a movie that starts out with a good idea devolve into nothing more than a generic actioner with nothing particularly interesting to say. Day Shift had a great opportunity to possibly explore hustle culture and the gig economy through the lens of vampire hunting. There's definitely potential in the idea that people putting their lives on the line hunting dangerous monsters are just doing so to pay their rent. However, this movie shows no interest in really digging deep into its own setup. Instead, Day Shift veers into mindless style-over-substance excess that almost entirely tosses out the premise on which it's built.
There's an almost distracting level of worldbuilding that is done exclusively through exposition. Unlike the work done in the John Wick movies (two of which Shay Hatten worked on), Day Shift prefers to tell rather than show. Dave Franco's Seth is saddled with a lot of this work. This includes explaining all of the different types of vampires to Bud, who already knows all of this but makes Seth do it anyway, presumably because the writers didn't know how else to work it into the script.
Aside from the clumsy way it is delivered, all of the rules of this world and its specific vampire types never really come into play that much. At one point, Bud mentions that vampires release a gas after being killed that can attract other vampires if it gets on a person. The only way to get rid of it is to use a very abrasive cleaning powder. Does this ever factor into the plot in an interesting way? No, it's mostly just there to make a joke about not getting the powder in a very sensitive part of the body. That's another one of Day Shift's biggest problems: the dialogue in this movie amounts to nothing more than childish jokes and clichés. Seth wetting himself after encountering vampires not once but twice is supposed to be a great running gag, but its puerile quality and payoff in the movie's final act are just pathetic.
Aside from the grade-school level humor and slapdash worldbuilding, Day Shift's plot just never really clicks together all that well. In the beginning, it seems like there is a larger plot involving something that allows vampires to go out in the sun. However, but the second half of the movie, this is just shrugged off by the characters as something they've known about this whole time. The plot then devolves into a gunfight in an underground lair, falling so far from its setup that it feels like an entirely different movie.
What almost (emphasis on almost) saves Day Shift from being a complete disaster are some well-executed action scenes. The opening sequence where Bud battles a contorting, vampiric elderly woman features some impressive fight choreography that is actually shown in wide shots, along with some fun ideas like a quick shot of a mirror reflecting Bud's struggle with the vampire minus her reflection. Then, near the middle of the film, Bud and Seth team up with a couple of other hunters (one played by legendary martial arts performer Scott Adkins) to take out a nest of vampires in a model home. Here, too, the action is comprehensible, well-shot, and actually exciting. Credit goes to J.J Perry, who has worked as a stunt coordinator and performer for years. It's just too bad that the rest of the film can't live up to Perry's strengths.
Day Shift manages to squander what could have otherwise been a really interesting idea, turning it into something that could have been dumb fun, but is instead just dumb. The movie does not deserve the care and work that obviously went into its action sequences, which are unfortunately too few and far between. It's also hard to get invested in a movie that has so many script problems and never tries to rise above its juvenile sense of humor. Even though it has no teeth, Day Shift bites.
Day Shift is available to stream on Netflix.
Day Shift
Display card tags widget Display card community and brand rating widget
- Release Date
- August 12, 2022
To provide for his family, Jamie Foxx works for a pool cleaning service, which happens to be a front for a vampire hunting union in San Fernando, California. Jamie Foxx, alongside Snoop Dogg and Dave Franco, will work together as they slowly chip away at the vampire hierarchy led by a real estate magnate portrayed by Karla Souza in the overridden valley.