5/10 Movies like “Day Shift” are all about expectations. If you expect some ground breaking, incredible vampire film, you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you expect a dumb but fun way to kill a couple of hours, you might very well find yourself enjoying this mindless but entertaining thriller. Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. Jamie Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a secret vampire hunter who pretends to be a pool man to cover up his real line of work. In this universe, hunting vampires is big business and Bud is trying to provide for his young daughter when his estranged wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) threatens to take her and move away from California, where they all reside. Vampire hunters are nothing new in film and television with everything from “Blade” to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” covering similar material. The overarching plot doesn’t bring anything new to the table and Bud’s pairing with his union rep Seth (Dave Franco) combines the buddy comedy genre to the action/horror genre. Most of the attempts at humor however fall flat due to Foxx and Franco having mediocre chemistry and childish potty humor such as grown adults peeing their pants repeatedly. There is also a lot of clunky exposition and several plot points that are left abandoned with no explanation. For example, there is a house full of all five different breeds of vampires, which Seth notes how strange that is since several of the breeds hate other ones and would never occupy space together. It is an interesting idea but instead of finding out why all of the vampires grouped together when normally they would partake in infighting, the movie completely abandons that mystery and never brings it up again, which was baffling. The rules around vampires are also pretty inconsistent. It is said that all vampires are bad. No matter how good a human is, once they are turned, they are no longer that same, good person and are now an evil vampire. The movie completely throws that out the window as we are introduced to several good vampires who can choose to drink blood instead of preying on the innocent and even assist the good guys in their fight. This blatant contradiction could have easily been avoided by just saying that some vampires are good and some are bad but the screenwriters don’t seem to exude much common sense here. The antagonist Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) is the main, bad vampire who doubles as a real estate agent and can wear sunscreen to be in the sun for a little while. Not sure why a vampire who can only stand limited time outdoors would pick a job that requires you to be outdoors for most of the day. Anyways, one ridiculous moment sees Heather taking two hostages and instead of turning them into vampires on the spot in front of their loved one, takes them to a different location and leaves the protagonist alive so they can regroup and attempt to save their loved ones later. It feels like something out of a bad James Bond movie when the villain monologues and leaves enough free time for our hero to save the day instead of just acting out their plan immediately. Finally, one character essentially dies but then comes back right at the very end of the movie. Never mind the fact that they would have been turned into a vampire and lived or just flat out died in an explosion but they come back and appear to still be human (as evidenced by being out in the sunlight) after having been bit in the neck. It makes no sense and the film makers should have just killed the character off or turned them into a vampire. As for what works, Foxx is a likeable leading man and while Franco’s character is a silly one, he does grow on you by the end of the movie. Good does the best she can in her supporting role as the acting all around was certainly satisfactory. The best parts of the movie are definitely the action scenes. All of the hand to hand fight scenes are well choreographed and go on for a decent amount of time. Many fight scenes end too quickly and leave you wanting more but these fight scenes last for the perfect amount of time and supply some solid blood and gore. Multiple various weapons are utilized so the fighting doesn’t become repetitive and the variation in vampire breeds also brings some diversity to the action. The soundtrack is fun and despite almost being two hours long, the pacing works well so you won’t be glancing down at your watch/phone to check the time. Yes, a fair amount of the action is over the top (particularly the car chase scene) but you will have fun watching the mayhem unfold. Between this year’s “Morbius”, “The Invitation” and “House of Darkness”, this mediocre offering somehow stands as the best of this year’s vampire offerings. Let’s hope if they make a sequel/franchise from this (as Netflix plans to) that they spend more time on the script and give us better humor, less clichés and a stronger plot while keeping the strong action and soundtrack intact.
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