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Vampires have taken on a whole lot of different images through the years—from monsters like Dracula and Nosferatu to the moody heartthrobs of the Twilight franchise. And in the new Netflix thriller Day Shift, they can also be power-hungry business moguls from the San Fernando Valley, who are hunted by a pool guy.
Day Shift stars Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski, a hard-working dad whose pool cleaning business is just a cover for his real job as a vampire hunter. When his estranged wife threatens to move to Florida with their daughter, Bud has to step up his game to make enough money to pay for her school tuition and braces. So, with help from his good friend, Big John (Snoop Dogg), he gets back into the local union. But he soon finds himself faced with an ultra-powerful vampire who’s determined to take over the Valley.
In order to get back in the union, where vampire fangs bring in top dollar, Bud has to take on the less lucrative day shift and work with a union rep—Dave Franco’s buttoned-up Seth—who follows his every move on his boss’s orders, looking for any excuse to get Bud kicked back out. And it’s through Seth that most of the attempts at comedy play out. Seth would much rather work a desk job than go out into the field, where all kinds of scary things can happen. And Franco spends the film panicking and screaming and wetting himself through every vampire confrontation. At times, the humor works, but Seth’s freak-outs do eventually get old. Really, the most entertaining parts of the film involve Snoop Dogg as a laid-back, smooth-talking, truck-driving, cowboy-hat-wearing hunter—but he doesn’t get nearly enough screen time. And that really is another missed opportunity.
If you’re looking for a wildly laugh-out-loud comedic thriller, then, this isn’t really it. It is, however, filled with vampire combat. Director J.J. Perry is known for his stunt work on films like John Wick—and he definitely brings plenty of carefully choreographed fight sequences and explosive vampire violence to the film. So if you’re looking for action, you’ll find plenty of that here. But the writing isn’t nearly as much fun as the cast listing might suggest.
If you love action and flying vampire body parts, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in Day Shift. But while it offers all kinds of vampire battles, it’s lighter on the humor than it could have been.
Day Shift premieres on Netflix on August 12, 2022.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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