Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco star in "Day Shift," a vampire hunting movie. The movie follows the story of a hard working blue collar dad who just wants to provide a good life for his quick-witted daughter, but his mundane San Fernando Valley pool cleaning job is a front for his real source of income, hunting and killing vampires as part of an international Union of vampire hunters.Although the premise sounds great, can J.J. Perry make it work?
The opening scene of the film is a wild action sequence that sees Jamie Foxx shooting a shotgun at an old lady, who turns out to have been a vampire. The movie then launches into an amazing fight scene between them. I feel like the movie really has fun with this kind of rag-doll physics in its action scenes, making those sequences pop in a way that a lot of the Netflix action movies (or action blockbusters these days) don't.
Day Shift has a lot of fun and is not too serious. I was able to enjoy it the entire way. It had original action and didn't require me to think too much. I enjoyed it immensely. It had good humor and I found myself laughing out loud a fair bit. It also drew inspiration from the brilliant vampire films Blade and Lost Boys, two of my all-time favorite films. The acting was strong, the direction was superb and the cinematography excellent. Day Shift will satisfy those (other) who are looking for something that is entertaining but not too serious. It's very entertaining.
Day Shift is a mixed movie. On one hand, there is a lot of fun action and some fun characters (the brothers and Seth), but on the other hand the villain was horrible and there are a lot of mediocre characters. There were scenes that could have been added but they didn't. Bud's neighbor acts like they are close friends even though she was only given 3 minutes of screen-time prior to the final scene. This makes the characters who are better than others shine even more. Overall, it's an enjoyable movie, but it could have been better.
Snoop Dogg is almost gone. He is great in Day Shift. The whole movie is worth it because of him. His comedy is great and he's funny. More importantly, he just feels so natural in the part. It's almost as if he was meant to do it.