The last time a major Hollywood studio attempted to release a vampire-themed action film, they brought us the abominable, atrocious, ultimately risible Morbius — a one-and-down, franchise non-starter. With the bad taste still in the mouths of genre fans, the latest but maybe not greatest Day Shift, arrives on Netflix, with modest, if not wholly unentertaining, results. Leaning heavily into Blade-style geysers of blood and gore, stunt-heavy action, and small-bore comic chemistry between Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco as a not unexpectedly mismatched vampire-hunting duo, the feature is a perfectly serviceable, entertaining, time-wasting genre entry.
When we first meet Foxx’s character, Bud Jablonski, he’s seemingly going about a regular day as a low-earning, working-class pool cleaner in the sun-scorched San Fernando Valley. Moments later Jablonski’s true intentions reveal themselves: He swaps his pool cleaning service uniform for dirty overalls and a small arsenal, then enters a nondescript, single-level home, dispatching two incredibly annoyed, acrobatic vampires with some effort. Jablonski’s success, of course, is never in doubt. We get a flavour, however, of the kinds of threats the character faces and his primary motivation for hunting vampires at grave risk to his life, limb, and personal life.
We soon learn that Jablonski operates in Southern California as just one among many other vampire hunters. Most are part of a vast, international, Men in Black-inspired union. Jablonski’s repeated failure to follow the union’s myriad bureaucratic rules has left him desperately on the outside looking in, scrounging for the odd, vampire-hunting job and leveraging the kills as part of a black market for vampire fangs run by a business associate, Troy (Peter Stormare), of dubious intent and even more questionable ethics. It’s almost enough for Jablonski to set aside whatever pride he has left and beg the vampire-hunting union for another chance to earn his keep on the up-and-up.
With a conveniently impending deadline involving his estranged wife, Jocelyn (Meagan Good), relocating to Florida and taking their preteen daughter, Paige (Zion Broadnax), unless Jablonski comes up with a cool 10Gs to cover Paige’s elementary school tuition and dental work (insert argument for universal healthcare and well-funded public schools here), Jablonski enlists his old friend and mentor, Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg), to get him one last chance with the union, in turn opening up the possibility of a lucrative payday. As always in a capitalistic society, money is the root of all evil, and somehow, the exact opposite.
Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten’s screenplay unsubtly sets Foxx’s working-class hero against the villainous Audrey San Fernando (Karla Souza), a centuries-old vampire, realtor, and hopeful real-estate entrepreneur, mirroring the real-world problem of large investment companies purchasing properties once intended for homeowners and renters. Tice and Hatten’s script keeps the contrast surface-level, inexplicably pushing Audrey to the sidelines, in turn weakening her role as Day Shift’s supposed “Big Bad.” It’s not until the last half hour or so that Audrey’s intentions for Jablonski start to come into focus.
By then, Audrey’s status as a worthy foe for Jablonski has been undermined, if not fatally, then significantly enough that the climax lacks the visceral punch and/or throat slitting promised by Audrey’s memorable entrance in the first act. Instead, Day Shift spends the bulk of the second act on Jablonski, the street-smart, cynical vampire hunter, Seth, the book-smart, out-of-his-depth office drone turned apprentice vampire hunter and the permutations and perambulations of their personal and professional relationship.
As we’re often reminded when it comes to genre films, it’s not the destination, but the journey and how we get there that counts, and the journey here, filled with periodic bouts of blood-spattered, gore-filled vampire-hunting filled with cleanly directed, hyperkinetic stunt-work, rarely disappoint and when they do, it’s only due to the diminishing returns associated with repetition. And where that repetition starts to result in tedium, the world-building, including a convoluted, somewhat ill-defined mythology, promises sequels or spin-offs well beyond the confines of Day Shift’s over-familiar plot, the resolution of the Jablonski-Audrey conflict, or Jablonski’s hoped-for reconciliation with his family.
Day Shift is now available to stream via Netflix.
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