Jamie Foxx stars as a vampire hunter in the sunny San Fernando Valley. Unlike most screen vamp slayers, he has modest aims. He’s not trying to rid the world of bloodsuckers. He just wants to get enough dough to pay for his kid’s braces.
Day Shift kicks off with a great fight sequence with an old vampire contortionist lady who bends, cracks, and gnarls her body in a variety of ways while attacking Foxx. From there on, it gets a little spotty in places. Like most Netflix movies, it’s way too long (almost two hours), but the biggest debit is the weak villain. As Audrey San Fernando, Karla Souza looks and acts less like a Queen of the Damned and more like a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills. That or maybe a reject from one of those house-flipping reality shows since her character moonlights… err… daylights as a real estate mogul.
Fortunately, the rest of the supporting cast is a lot of fun. There’s Snoop Dogg as a cowboy vampire hunter, Peter Stormare as a sleazy pawnbroker who buys vampire teeth on the black market, and Dave Franco as Foxx’s nerdy by-the-book partner. The best characters are a pair of badass Russian vampire hunters played by Steve Howey and DTV action legend Scott Adkins. Their big action sequence where they team up with Foxx to dispose of a nest of vamps is breathless, fun, and inventive. (I especially dug the stake that can also be used as a nunchuck.) It’s enough to make you wish that Adkins and Howey get their own spin-off somewhere down the road.
Foxx’s performance helps to tie the loosey-goosey tone together. He’s very funny and is at his best when he’s ad-libbing insults at the expense of Franco. He also fares quite well in his everyman family man scenes too, which grounds the film from flying off the rails.
Overall, Day Shift is more than a tad bit uneven. It often feels like parts of a couple of different scripts sewed together. All this barely gels, and if it skates by with a *** rating, it’s thanks to the charm of the cast. It’s just that it never quite realizes its full potential. There are times when it flirts with awesomeness (like the stuff with Adkins and Howey), and yet it always feels like it’s holding back. Ultimately, it delivers just enough to make it all worthwhile, but it kind of leaves you wanting more.
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