Jamie Foxx carries Netflix’s frantic vampire romp on his shoulders

Day Shift, the first film directed by stunt coordinator and martial artist JJ Perry, debuted on Netflix on August 12, 2022. While Perry, known for his stunt work on blockbusters like John Wick and F9: The Fate of the Furious, manages to set his vampire action comedy apart from others in the genre, it falls short of the thrilling performances one would expect from his film would have.

Jamie Foxx, who leads the cast as protagonist and vampire slayer Bud Jablonski, really excels at balancing the divisions between action, comedy, satire, horror and drama. You can’t see anyone other than Foxx accomplishing this feat.

To be fair, Seth, played by Dave Franco, did well to bring some welcome slapstick humor to the film and worked well with Jamie Foxx’s character. The cast as a whole added to the mood of the film, and Snoop Dogg and Karla Souza both stood out in their limited roles.

However, the storyline, which remained largely disorganized and underdeveloped, cannot be praised to that extent. Day Shift does a good job of entertaining audiences for a mindless Friday night film, but don’t expect anything special.

For the full film review and synopsis, read on.

Day Shift’s plot is ridiculous and convoluted.

In the San Fernando Valley, Bud Jablonski used to be a laborer who cleaned wealthy people’s swimming pools until his employer left. Then he went back to his real work of hunting vampires and removing their fangs. He could support himself on a good day, given the enormous amount of money his fangs would fetch.

Until he needed $10,000 to keep his family from moving to Florida, he juggled his undercover work and a family that included his adorable and witty daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax) and ex-wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good). , a life turned upside down.

His only option was to rejoin the “association” of vampire hunters, which had expelled him for consistently breaking a number of their rules. Big John (Snoop Dogg), his unconventional sidekick and supporter, had the power to get him the position all over again.

The only stipulation was that a nervous accountant named Seth (Dave Franco) oversees his field operations and reports to union boss Ralph Seeger (Eric Lange).

In Day Shift, there were discussions about vampire canes, a vampire suzerain named El Jefe, black market sunscreen that allowed vampires to go out in the sun, five different types of vampires each categorized by age, and different codes that sounded like gibberish sounded but were actually vampire hunting techniques. However, none of them ultimately mattered in the film.

Not only did Bud and Seth discover loopholes in the rules of the vampire hunting union; The plot of the film was also interspersed with them. The vampires occasionally took too long to kill, causing no amount of wooden bullets to be effective, while sometimes being destroyed by machine gun fire alone. But couldn’t they have been killed with a steel blade?

Created by Karla Souza, the formidable Vampire Queen was a badass antagonist who was defeated relatively quickly. The ancient vampire who was her daughter from the first scene put up a better fight, making the ending feel rushed and disjointed. Big John, a character played by Snoop Dogg, appeared to have sacrificed himself to kill a legion of vampires, but when he was revived, where were his fangs?

Overall, Day Shift was interesting to watch as long as you left criticism at the door. It seems as if the designers initially had an ambitious plan that gradually lost steam and came to a bad result. However, the film’s senseless action and everyday bloodlust would make for a passable movie night.

Day Shift was missing JJ Perry’s John Wick caliber action

Day Shift opened with a fight scene that saw Foxx show off his action skills as he defeated an elderly vampire with a ravenous appetite for blood. The action opening scene was a great technique to draw people in. It had just the right amount of gore and special effects.

However, as increasingly lackluster vampires attacked Jablonski, it became annoying and monotonous to see the same maneuvers repeated. It was repetitive seeing the same stunts in one of the sequences where Bud, Seth and the Nazarian brothers – all professional vampire hunters – were fighting a swarm of vampires.

Repeated gunfire, vampires being flung around like bullet-hit zombies, bizarre spider walks, and blood-caked, powdered faces. What happened to Keanu Reeves’ incredible action choreography from the John Wick movies?

Watch Day Shift on Netflix for a quirky, comedic, video game-inspired vampire-hunting adventure and Jamie Foxx’s well-rounded performance in an otherwise uninspired film.