Day Shift, originally released to Netflix in August of 2022, follows Jamie Foxx as a down on his luck father and blue collar tradesman who moonlights as vampire hunter. First time director J.J. Perry takes the helm with a script from first time writer Tyler Tice and co-scribe of Netflix’s Army of the Dead: Shay Hatten (John Wick 3 & 4, Army of Thieves). The directing and writing team finds a fair amount of fun new ground to tread within the well-worn vampire genre, but unfortunately the movie often fails to do the same with its secondary summer blockbuster ingredients. While the film finds interesting and fun ways of exploring the vampire genre such as the various vampire hunters being a part of an extremely bureaucratic union that reminds one of waiting in line at the DMV, it also has a lot of zany fun with its characters. 

Fox plays the role of the ace vampire hunter who struggles to play by the union’s rules and isn’t interested in connecting with or caring about anyone besides his estranged family. This isn’t a particularly nuanced character, but it fits this type of movie serviceably and Foxx plays the role well. Foxx’s supporting cast consists of Dave Franco doing his best Dave Franco. That sounds like an insult, but as long as he’s cast in the right role, a little bit of Dave Franco can be a great thing. His casting fits the tone of the movie well. Snoop Dogg also shows up in a role where the movie shows no interest in hiding the obvious fact that the character was built for Snoop from its inception. Again though, and three’s a charm, IT WORKS. The cast is rounded out with Meagan Good playing Jamie Foxx’s wife in the film. It’s always nice to see her no matter how small the role, but I will say that she does get a bit to do in the third act which is nice. Lastly we have Karla Souza as the film’s primary villain who unfortunately doesn’t achieve anything too memorable in the role, but a slight sense of attitude saves the character from total boredom. Ooh, Scott Adkins also shows up in a fun and badass vampire hunter role. I think little fun characters such as Adkins are what really make the movie a lot of fun, achieving that summer blockbuster feel.

For better or worse, that summer blockbuster type film really feels like what they were going for here as opposed to anything that resembles a scary or thrilling film. There is a fair amount of gore here, but it all looks a bit low budget, and not in the good 70’s B-movie type of way. It looks fake in the cheap CGI sort of way. Also, almost every scene that includes gore is played for some kind of comedy or zany thrill. On top of all of that, ⅔ of the vampire action takes place in sunny San Fernando valley daylight, reliving the film of a good amount of inherent tension that would’ve been there otherwise. None of this is much of a problem if this fun tone is what the filmmaker was going for, but I feel that mixing in a good amount of genuine horror would’ve significantly helped the third act in terms of tension and stakes. Another aspect of this comes from the fact that there is no real consistency in terms of the rules of vampirism and death. The film implies certain things, flat out states certain things, and then contradicts them later in the film with no explanation. It left me with too many questions in terms of how it all works which is saying a lot considering I’m usually quite forgiving on those kinds of questions. 

Overall, the film is a nice R-rated summer diversion or even a decent pick to throw into the Halloween rotation. Although, the film does often suffer from blockbuster as well as meta cliches. Not only that, but the jokes often either don’t land or are only good for a slight chuckle. The movie fails to truly excel at anything, while also failing at nothing. That, I think, if anything, is the film’s most glaring flaw.  B-