‘Day Shift’ Review: Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg Kick Major Vamp Ass
J.J. Perry’s Day Shift is a balls-to-the-walls actioner that’s best experienced with a group of people or in a midnight screening
Day Shift has plenty of flaws, one of which is it is easily one of the most derivative vampire films to come out in awhile. Its main plot is plucked straight out of Stephen Norrington’s Blade, and does very little to hide it. Heck, the climax is set in a tomb that resembles the one in Blade. The CGI is also particularly atrocious, Morbius-level of bad, and specifically feels like it was finished in 1993.
Most disappointing, you can see everything coming a mile away. Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) works the Day Shift at a Vampire Hunters’ Union alongside his representative Seth (Dave Franco). But when Bud pissed off the wrong vampire (Souza), he goes to war with them after they kidnap his wife (Meagan Good) and daughter (Zion Broadnax), attempting to turn them into vampires. He teams up with his mentor, Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg), and vampire Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) to kill every single vampire responsible for his family’s kidnapping. By then, you can probably fill in the blanks and know everything that will [predictably] occur without fault.
But what if I told you that all of its flaws can be easily shrugged off because the movie kicks so much ass? That’s what happens from when Day Shift starts, which could be summed up as nothing but good ol’ fashioned full throttle carnage with three great performances at its core from Foxx, Snoop, and Scott Adkins, who appears in the movie as one of the Nazarian Brothers in the best action scene of the movie.
2022 has been the year of maximalist blockbusters, with films Ambulance, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Prey, RRR, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and Elvis taking over our screens. We can safely add Day Shift to that category, even if it had no theatrical release. Director J.J. Perry and screenwriters Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten know exactly when to up the ante with their elaborate action set-pieces and when to elicit a strong reaction from the audience. The vampires literally fly to wall, TV or table as they get shot in the chest (or head), which makes Perry able to craft some very impressive kinetic impact. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching a choreographed ballet sequence, slowly amping up in drama and intensity as they kill more vampires. It’s brutal and immensely cathartic, but every kill becomes even more memorable when the protagonists start to use over the top gimmicks such as knives in their shoes, garlic grenades, spitting garlic on the face of vampires which melt on the spot or beheading them with a silver string and then preceding to kick their heads from their bodies.
That’s a lot of exclamation points, but Day Shift’s action sequences can effectively craft stuff that audiences have never seen before, and to have it relegated to streaming is an absolute travesty. I cannot imagine how the aforementioned Nazarian Brothers scene would play out in a cinema–it’s non-stop bloody carnage for ten straight minutes and throws so much creative amounts of gore at the audience that it’s easily one of the very best action set-pieces of the year. Its meticulously crafted kills would bring a sold-out auditorium to pure euphoria, especially when Adkins says “Buckshot mouthwash, baby!” and kills a vampire in the most over-the-top way possible.
Every action scene in Day Shift screams excess, but I couldn’t help but smile at everything the movie threw at me, even when it started to become increasingly cheesy—though it’s short-lived because when Snoop Dogg arrives with a mini-gun (aptly named Big Bertha) and starts to blow the roof off a mall, it’s easy to forgive (and forget) the film’s inconsistencies. But the scene proves that Dogg is a bonafide action star and should be in more movies where he completely disappears from the picture for 45 minutes and then shows up to save the day and whoop so much ass that you can’t help but cheer at his return as if he was Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Everyone else is on top of their A-Game too—Jamie Foxx is a highly charismatic star, and proves that his charm is still intact, while sharing a funny banter with Dave Franco, Snoop Dogg, and Scott Adkins. The only performer who isn’t on the same level as these three is Bordizzo, but that’s solely because her character is terribly underdeveloped. We know nothing about her, and therefore our emotional attachment is limited.
But the rest of the film is nothing but pure, unadulterated fun. Perry can overcome its clunky (and predictable) plot with a constant series of impeccably shot and choreographed action set-pieces that exploit the talents of their lead stars. Because of this, Day Shift is one of the most insane moviegoing experiences of the year, an action movie that keeps impressing by finding a thousand creative ways to kill its antagonists and make your brain melt for 114 continuous minutes. Netflix should’ve released it in IMAX, because it would’ve been one of the biggest events of the summer.