A film review by Craig J. Koban August 23, 2022

DAY SHIFT  ½   

2022, R, 107 mins.

Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski  /  Dave Franco as Seth  /  Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Heather  /  Meagan Good as Jocelyn Jablonski  /  Karla Souza as Audrey San Fernando  /  Snoop Dogg as Big John Elliott  /  Zion Broadnax as Paige Jablonski

ORIGINAL FILM

Netflix's horror comedy DAY SHIFT is one of those hodgepodge pieces of cinema in the way that it's cannibalized from so many other parts of better genre efforts before it.  That's kind of a blessing and curse.

Part GHOSTBUSTERS, part MEN IN BLACK, and part BLADE, this J.J. Perry directorial debut concerns a Californian pool cleaner that secretly works for a blue collar underground organization of vampire hunters that defends humanity from blood thirsty creatures.  These monster death dealers also score money on the side by extracting the fangs of their fallen targets and selling them on the undead black market.  

There have been so many vampire centric films over the years that it becomes easy to lose track of them all, not to mention that seemingly everything has been done to relative death with this subject matter.  DAY SHIFT sprinkles in the somewhat novel concept of having a bunch of unionized Van Helsing wannabes doing what they can to control their state's vampire population...kind of like glorified pest control.  There's a considerable amount of infectious goofiness that permeates Perry's film, and it does have some bonkers action sequences and nifty additions to previously established vampire lore.  Unfortunately, DAY SHIFT is a bit too scattershot for its own good and misses the mark when it comes to the potentially juicy satire contained within its story.   

The always dependable, but - let's face it - somewhat slummin'-it-here Jamie Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, whose last name sounds like a put-down descriptor for a go-nowhere loser.  He's one of those aforementioned L.A. residing pool cleaners that uses the job as a front to hide his real profession of working for a vampire union that cracks down on all sorts of neck suckers that plague the City of Angels.  He was trained by none other than Snoop Dogg's Big John Elliott, who got Bud into the union, but then later was excommunicated from it for being a rowdy rule breaker.  Bud seems really good at his job and has been mentored quite well by Big John, but he has hit personal rock bottom as a struggling divorced dad that's having difficulty anteing up money for his ex wife (Meagan Good) to support their daughter.  She gives him one last ultimatum: come up with ten grand to help with various nagging bills (like private school tuition, mortgage payments, and braces for the kid) in a week or she's going to move far away with their daughter in tow.  Realizing that he definitely doesn't have that kind of cash laying around, Bud seeks out as many vampires as he can to sell their teeth to secure his family's future with him.  He also wants to get back into the vamp-busting union that once tossed him out. 

Reaching out to Big Jay for help, Bud is granted a meeting with union boss Ralph (Eric Lang), who agrees to give him one last chance, but if he screws up just once then he's out for good.  Adding on to this pressure is Ralph's insistence that Bud be given a new partner to monitor his every move.  Joining Bud is Seth (Dave Franco), who's more of a pencil pusher back at the office and has next to no vampire hunting experience, which immensely complicates things for Bud.  An even larger thorn in his side is the appearance of Audrey (Karla Souza), who's a centuries old vampire that works as - what else? - a take-no-prisoners real estate agent that's draining the valley dry in more ways than one.  She becomes mighty upset with Bud when she discovers that he has killed her near 100 year old daughter, which leads to her seeking out revenge against him.  Even though Aubrey has the facade of a strong willed and well put together Mexican-American business woman in her thirties, she's actually several centuries old and has no shame in spilling blood on her tailored power suits if it means getting what she wants as a vampire and the head of a real estate company. 

To a small degree, I liked the basics of the core premise here, especially for how it portrays less glamorous middle class stiffs that are secretly saving the world from vampire expansion.  The overall tone and vibe of DAY SHIFT owes a lot to Barry Sonnenfeld's MEN IN BLACK, and much of the cheekier elements of this undead tale made me think of films like FRIGHT NIGHT and SHAUN OF THE DEAD.  That's not to say that DAY SHIFT is as clever, funny, or even scary as those other films.  That, and the concept of clandestine bureaucratic organizations policing monsters in the real world has - to be fair - been kind of done to death.  Also thrown into the mix are obligatory buddy cop genre elements in Bud's relationship with Seth (one's a naive and weak willed rookie, one's a tough talking veteran...yadda yadda).  So much of DAY SHIFT feels lazily pilfered from so many other previous films and genres that it becomes distracting at times, but the film does add some much needed new elements to vampire mythology at the very least.  Like, for example, the film's exploration of vampire classes (not all are created equal) and some of the ridiculously cool weapons that Bud and company use, like garlic laced grenades (quite neat).  And if you want to see a gatling gun mow down hundreds of vampires then this is your film.  The heroes use just about everything but the kitchen sink here to decimate their intended prey. 

And Percy - a former stuntman turned director - has some fun with conjuring up many of the film's action beats, with one of the standout ones being an introductory battle between Bud and what appears to be an elderly vampire (who turns out to be Audrey's daughter), and watching Bud try to kill this violently contorting and seemingly unstoppable creature gave me some legitimate EVIL DEAD vibes in a good way (plus, it packs an initial shocking jolt to see Bud shotgun blast this old granny before you even know what really lurks beneath).  There's a substantial amount of fast paced and kinetic camera movement alongside a few instances of vertigo inducing drone shots (thankfully, Perry doesn't overdo them here the same way that, for example, Michael Bay used to pornographic levels in AMBULANCE), but the choreography and editorial flow remains reasonably clear and concise.  I admired the cleverness of just how gravity defying these vampires are here on top of the insidiously resourceful methods that Bud and his clan employ to stop these monsters of the night.  This has to be the most spine-snapping happy vampire movie that I've certainly ever seen, and Perry deserves some props for showing some genuine creativity in exploring all of the bone crushing, brain splattering, and blood spewing mayhem.  In an age when so many potential franchise starting films aim for audience friendly PG-13 ratings, it's a welcome relief to see DAY SHIFT embrace the sickening extremes of its R rating.  

The cast here is pretty solid as well, even when they're obviously going through their perfunctory character paces.  Foxx is always a cooler than cool presence in just about any film, and he's quite good here playing his exceedingly well trained and experienced vampire hunter that often still gets blindsided by all of the limitless macabre absurdity that surrounds his job.  He's well paired with Snoop Dog's super chill Big Jay, who looks pretty great in his cowboy duster and hat and steals a few key scenes from everyone (granted, he's not in it no where near as much as the marketing for the film has let on).  Dave Franco might be DAY SHIFT's secret comic weapon, who plays the ultra dorky and in over his head office worker that gets a rather large taste of Bud's world very quickly, which leads to some socially embarrassing mishaps (spoiler alert - he's so scared of vampires that he pisses his pants...like...more than once).  There's a novel twist involving this character's overall arc that I won't give away, other than to say that he's forced very quickly at one point to come to grips with the reality of this vampire plagued world and get acclimated to it as fast as possible.  Watching this squeamish book worm morph into a badass seems like a preordained story beat, but DAY SHIFT finds a cool ways to subvert those troupes.