Day Shift

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Day Shift is a vampire action-comedy in which Bud, a recently divorced father, hunts vampires for a living. When his ex-wife considers leaving California to Florida due to money troubles, Bud has to make some unusual allies and risky kills to raise the money she needs. This film plays fast and loose with expectations which is probably the biggest praise I have for it. While there are a lot of moments where this film takes itself more seriously than it needs to, it is those moments in which the film shrugs and takes itself and the genre not too seriously that shine. The dialogue in particular, whether improvised or not, is very quick-witted. Jamie Foxx's character asking a frozen yoghurt salesman if they do a discount for Black History Month was stupendously funny. I also have a lot of praise for the soundtrack, it often heightened those moments of absurdity and enhanced the action scenes with a bit of cool factor.

 

Dave Franco, who played Seth, is a great source of comedy as this office jockey drawn out into the field; Franco's depiction of a man perpetually terrified by the very line of work he is in is often funny. Meagan Good, who played Jocelyn Jablonski, has immense chemistry with Fox that also comes with the appropriate strain of their roles being divorced; I loved how combative Good could get over the course of a scene and some of her quickfire retorts were great. Steve Howey and Scott Adkins, who played Mike Nazarian and Diran Nazarian respectively, have such immense physical presence in what is one of the peak action scenes of the film; Howey and Adkins share a very brotherly chemistry that makes the way they play off one another so genuine. Peter Stormare, who played Troy, is one of the funniest personalities in the cast; Stormare's conniving backdoor dealing salesman is a real weasel and yet oddly likeable.

However, the best performance came from Jamie Foxx, who played Bud Jablonski. Like a lot of Foxx's more action-heavy protagonists Bud is a very tough figure, he comes across as highly capable and extremely unrelenting in the face of danger. Yet there is also a steady precision to him, he's cunning and often plans in a way that sees him get ahead. I loved seeing Foxx portray a kindly Dad in such an action heavy setting, he's a natural at portraying this genuinely caring and loving figure. His chemistry with Good is also worthy of praise, the pair find a great balnce of tension and fondness for one another. Ultimately I enjoyed Foxx the most because he is clearly the one having the most fun out of all of the cast. His line delivery is often hysterical and there is no doubt in my mind he ad-libbed a lot of great material in this.

Day Shift is unexpectedly fun at times but the issue with this film is that it takes itself far too seriously for long stretches of time. The film kicks off with a long drawn out fight sequence that establishes but also feels like the sort of C grade film action you'd expect from old 2000s straight to DVD releases. Fitting that straight to streaming seems to be the benchmark for these nowadays. As the film unravels it keeps hinting at vampire hierarchies, even highlighting a main vampire antagonist who is something of a property mogul meets vampire gang boss. Yet the film almost half-heartedly swerves away from this, choosing instead to give the main antagonist a very poorly constructed vendetta plot against Bud over the death of her vampire daughter. This might have had more meaning if said vampire daughter hadn't been treated as a contorting CGI fest that projected black bile vomit in it's near death throes. The film introduces a lot of big worldbuilding elements that it wants you to pay attention to; things like the Union and how their hunters operate seem to matter. But the explanation for these is hazy at best, sometimes they matter for the plot and other times they're there for comedic purposes solely. The film has a few side characters who could've been really great but are often reduced due to poor writing choices. Big John is purely there to be the Snoop Dogg role while the Heather role is very crudely inserted into the second and final act of the film. I was really disappointed with how the character of Seth was treated, turning him into a vampire made the character more of a gag than he already was and undid a lot of the work they had done to make him a character. It was almost frustrating to watch the film end with so many storylines abruptly tying up like we were watching little more than a Ride Along film; more than this the final line tipping a hat to The Lost Boys is wildly unearned.

The cinematography here is all about the set up, priming a thing for the visual effect or stunt that is to come. Very rarely did I watch a moment and feel stunned by the visual direction this film took. I was also really displeased by the visual effects, the contorting bodies of the vampires looked extremely bad and the scene in which Seth re-attachs his head is one of those moments that really need more time put into it.The score provided by Tyler Bates here is extremely forgettable, it pumps in rather generically during those action moments or tones up when it wants to leave you feeling horrified. But overall the soundtrack did far more work towards the overall tone of this film than the score did.

Natasha Liu Bordizzo, who played Heather, is woefully uderused in this film; the way this character turns from suspicious minor antagonist to protagonist is extremely jarring. Karla Souza, who played Audrey San Fernando, really hams it up big as the antagonist for the film; Souza doesn't know how to do anything other than dial it over the top for this film. Snoop Dogg, who played Big John Elliott, struggles with acting a role and it shows here; this man stumbles through dialogue and action scenes alike. Eric Lange, who played Ralph Seeger, gives a performance that feels far too serious for the type of film this is; Lange's intensive vindictive attitude towards Foxx's role is pushed way too strongly that it becomes the whole performance. Zion Broadnax, who played Paige Jablonski, is a very stereotypical young daughter role; I don't think Broadnax quite has the experience yet to give a character performance that really makes itself known.

One of the truly surprising things about 2022 is that there's now a worse vampire film than Morbius. I would give Day Shift a 3/10.