Day Shift

Day Shift movie review: Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco's new Netflix film is a fun throwback to 90s action cinema that features a particularly memorable Snoop ...

Franco previously appeared in a supporting role in the two Jump Street reboot films, and while Day Shift leans more heavily on the action and doesn’t warrant Lord-Miller comparisons, it has an odd-couple energy similar to those films. So, when he’s instructed to accompany Bud on ‘hunts’ and report back to his boss the moment Bud puts a toe out of line, Seth is thrown completely outside his comfort zone. But it’s also the kind of film in which the hero trips and falls on the goo, immediately after being puked on. He’s a dorky foil to the braggadocious Bud. Seth has the rulebook memorised, thinks guns are ‘immoral’, and is very proud of his most recent purchase — an ergonomic chair for his office desk. Jamie Foxx plays a down-on-his-luck vampire hunter in Day Shift, his second major Netflix film after the similarly comic book-y Project Power. A tongue-in-cheek throwback to the glory days of Michael Bay — at least when it isn’t actively reminding you of the early Netflix tentpole Bright — Day Shift is the kind of film in which an elderly lady vampire vomits black goo on the hero in the very first scene. After a series of misdemeanours, Bud was thrown out of the union and forced to sell his wares — vampire fangs and the like — on the black market.

Look out, Dracula: Jamie Foxx hunts bloodsuckers in Netflix's 'Day Shift,' one of several new-school vampire movies you can stream right now.

(And no, we're not including the superhero film "Morbius" because that just sucks.) (Don't bite the messenger.) "Day Shift" adds some fresh bits to the vampire legend with a villainous hierarchy and freaky fight skills.

Day Shift is now streaming on Netflix! We shared a full list of all the songs featured in the action comedy vampire horror film right here.

Below you’ll find a complete list of all the songs from the movie. This action-comedy vampire horror movie was directed by J.J. Perry in his feature directorial debut. Starring Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco and Snoop Dogg, Day Shift is a film about a vampire-hunting union and the lengths a father will go to win back his family’s trust.

Netflix's Day Shift adds up to an interesting idea and a couple of good action sequences brought down by a truly awful script.

No, it's mostly just there to make a joke about not getting the powder in a very sensitive part of the body. It's just too bad that the rest of the film can't live up to Perry's strengths. Day Shift had a great opportunity to possibly explore hustle culture and the gig economy through the lens of vampire hunting. The central idea behind Netflix's Day Shift is a good one: vampire hunting is a 9 to 5 job complete with a union that offers up benefits and other perks for being a member. Think of it as a more blue-collar take on something like Men in Black, where taking on the extraordinary is just a way to make a living. Bud's wife, from whom he is separated, is threatening to move his daughter to Florida unless Bud can come up with $10,000 in a week to pay for private school and braces.

One of Netflix's biggest movies of summer 2022 is here with the new Jamie Foxx action-comedy streaming around the globe. The movie not only has plenty of ...

(a movie series renowned for its soundtrack), John Wick 3, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2. The movie is about a pool cleaner who moonlights as a vampire hunter in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley to provide for his daughter. One of Netflix’s biggest movies of summer 2022 is here with the new Jamie Foxx action-comedy streaming around the globe.

Too bad dollar theaters don't really exist anymore, because this action-horror fest would be a hit there.

Aside from a handful of twists in the final act, there's nothing in "Day Shift" that you can't see coming long before it shows up onscreen, and the more potentially emotional aspects of the story are treated as glancingly/jokingly as everything else. His comic pitch is impeccable, and with his skinny frame and six-foot-four height, he looks magnificent in a ten-gallon hat and leather vests and dusters, like an animated cartoon version of an Old West gunfighter. The movie gets much more assured in the second half, when Bud and Audrey's stories begin to intertwine, and it finds the right balance of goofy deadpan comedy, martial arts-inflected supernatural brawls, gunplay, car chases, and gore. Elsewhere in the City of Angels, beyond the awareness of Bud and his workaday money troubles, a conspiracy is brewing. (Kudos to the Van Helsings of Los Angeles for unionizing; hope they have a good medical plan, because they get knocked around a lot.) Bud is a struggling divorced father whose wife Jocelyn ( Meagan Good) still loves him but just can't live with him because he's never around and keeps too many secrets from her. The first part of the movie is about Bud ramping up his vampire hunting to accumulate and sell more teeth so that he can make $10,000 in less than a week, give it to Jocelyn to catch up on the mortgage, pay private school tuition for their adorable daughter Paige ( Zion Broadnax), and eliminate the financial necessity of Jocelyn selling the house, moving away, and taking Paige with her.

Prepare yourself for some fairly hard-R gore and violence, but also hopefully some laughs, with Snoop Dogg and Dave Franco joining Foxx in this horror-action- ...

He gets his foot back in the door thanks to his old pal Big John (Snoop), who surely won’t disappear for a big chunk of the movie and later turn up at the exact perfect time with a giant weapon for the big third-act display of wanton violence. Somewhere in this premise – vampire hunter fights the system to take down evil Realtor vamp and also stop his family from moving away – is the potential to satirize bureaucracy and, um, predatory property-acquisition firms, I guess? Our Take: Today I learned, by watching Day Shift, that “vampires don’t pee or poop.” I was convinced this movie exists solely to wedge this notion into vampire lore, until I Googled whether or not they eliminate waste – and the results were far more entertaining than this forgettable assemblage of color, noise and cliches. Once Bud decaps a vamp, he gets out the pliers and yanks the fangs so he can sell them to a black-market collector played by Peter Stormare, who isn’t as crazy as you want him to be in this movie. Bud parries with his mulleted mustache-jackass boss (Eric Lange), who finally agrees to readmit him – and get him in the dental plan for the braces! He’s separated from his wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good), who’s having a tough time making ends meet, and is on the cusp of taking their adorabobble little daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax) to Florida to live with Grandma. School tuition needs to be paid and braces ain’t cheap, so Bud’s gotta sell enough bloodsucker canines to earn $10k by, like, Monday, or they go bye-bye, and if you think his hope of putting his family back together seems as threadbare as this plot, you’re right on the money. It doesn’t faze him of course, and soon enough, this becomes one of those movies with a beheading right off the bat, in the first few minutes. Of course, the rep is a greenhorn doofus, Seth (Franco), a pacifist who doesn’t like guns and routinely pisses himself during their vampire raids. Neato. That’s Bud’s signature move – hiding an extendable silver-coated wire in a hallway so it’ll lop off the noggin of a charging vamp, which seems like quite the accomplishment considering the relatively precise physics involved, you know, like setting it up at the exact perfect height so it slices right through the neck, and also doing it when the camera isn’t looking so we’ll be surprised by it, and maybe this is when you say SHUT UP IT’S JUST A MOVIE, and you may have a point. Its operator: Bud Jablonski (Foxx), who soon busts out his shotgun and ammo belt, because inside the house is an old lady who ain’t just an old lady – she’s a deadite zombie demon jiu-jitsu vampire lady who can bend and twist into all manner of unnatural shapes with the CRACKITY BONES sound we always hear in crappy horror movies. Now let’s find out if this one will enliven the dog days of summer, or just be a dog. Netflix movie Day Shift casts Jamie Foxx as a Hawaiian-shirted fella who pretends to be a pool boy but is actually a mercenary vampire hunter.

Day Shift, starring Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco, has a fascinating world, but rarely explores it substantially.

If this world does decide to open up more in the future, there’s plenty to explore in the Day Shiftiverse. This is where Day Shift shines, as Perry has decades of experience in the world of stunts, working on such films as Mortal Kombat, Iron Man, and Avatar. The fights in Day Shift are fast-paced and blunt, and almost always manage to feel spontaneous and brutal. Yet even though it never quite reaches its full potential, Day Shift is enjoyable for the aspects it does want to focus on, even though it’s hard not to wish it would investigate the larger world further. There’s plenty to be done within this world of vampire hunting unions, vampire realtors, this apparent underground collection of vampires, and the partnership between Bud and Seth. But again, Day Shift seems only to exist to show the possibilities of this universe, without embracing them or exploring them in any significant way. But while these fights are often impressive to watch, it’s the elements of Day Shift that aren’t explored further that feel like a missed opportunity. Once the coast is clear, Bud abandons cleaning a dingy pool and goes inside, where he takes out two seething vampires, and then pulls their fangs out to sell on the black market.

Given the cast features big names like Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg, it wouldn't be surprising if Netflix was mulling opportunities to expand the Day Shift ...

However, the chances of there being a Day Shift 2 are favorable. As of August 10, Netflix has not announced if there will be a sequel. The action-comedy vampire horror film Day Shift is now streaming on Netflix and people are already stoked to watch what looks like a super exciting summer movie.

"Day Shift" is about vampires, but it's one of those Frankenstein-like movies stitched together from used parts, with Jamie Foxx as a family man version of ...

That produces lots of banter, bickering and unfortunately, pants wetting, a natural if low-brow response to the new-to-him prospect of getting killed. Making his directing debut, veteran stuntman J.J. Perry and writers Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten seek to unearth laughs and fun where they can, which includes having Snoop Dogg on board as a veteran vampire hunter. Parenthood is again at the heart of the plot, such as it is, in "Day Shift," which could just as easily be titled "Dad: Vampire Slayer." Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a bounty hunter (he masquerades as a pool cleaner) struggling to make ends meet financially, suddenly given a major motivation to earn cash: His ex (Meagan Good) is planning to move away from Los Angeles with their young daughter (Zion Broadnax).

Jamie Foxx, Scott Adkins, Dave Franco, and Snoop Dogg flex their action muscles in Day Shift, J.J. Perry's first directorial project after more than 30 ...

Day Shift is a treat for genre fans and a perfect example of the unusual, flavor-filled projects Netflix should be investing in for the future. Day Shift’s place on Netflix means it will have a lot of competition for viewers’ attention, with the platform’s seemingly never-ending content stream always moving on to the next film or series without giving new releases much time in the spotlight. The chaos in this set-piece feels entirely fitting coming from a director who the stunt community lovingly nicknamed “Loco.” Best of all, none of the intricate fight scenes, intense shootouts, or wild car chases featured in the film are obscured by poor editing or unnecessary CGI. It’s all presented clearly, and fine-tuned for maximum visual impact. His 30-year-plus career as a stunt performer and action coordinator is nearly unparalleled in Hollywood. So when the action design collective known as “87eleven,” (the group behind the John Wick franchise, and many of recent cinema’s best action sequences) decided it were going to proceed with Day Shift as its first fully branded 87eleven film project, the team reached out to Perry, as a longstanding member of the group, to steer the ship. Day Shift’s action has echoes of that “tacticool” Wick style, but the supernatural setting allows him to incorporate more exaggerated elements. Scriptwriters Shay Hatten ( Army of the Dead) and Tyler Tice handle this without falling into the all-too-common mentality of “saving it for a sequel,” which has stopped so many film franchises before they ever really began. The refreshingly low stakes and the way the mundane and the supernatural effortlessly intermix here are just two of the ways Day Shift will remind savvy viewers of the many ’80s and ’90s video-store staples the film is so clearly a love letter to. Someone who has never seen the older films the script and directing nod to will still find a lot of quality subtle world-building that hints at where sequels (and spinoffs) could fit if there’s a suitable demand. Perry’s action sensibilities have always been a bit more freewheeling than those of his 87eleven colleagues, and it shows in the ways Day Shift looks different from Nobody or the John Wick movies. At his core, Bud is just a working schmo trying to get through the day, dealing with a boss who wants to see him unemployed, a partner he doesn’t want to deal with (Dave Franco), and unforeseen complications making his job more difficult, like a gentrifying elder bloodsucker (Karla Souza) who has plans to remake the Valley into a new vampire hot spot. In a blockbuster landscape where all big-budget movies are starting to feel frustratingly similar, Day Shift stands out for its clear point of view, obvious swagger, and decidedly old-school approach. Netflix’s vampire battling action movie Day Shift feels like the antithesis of that pattern.

Do Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg survive their fight against the vampire hordes in Netflix's latest film, Day Shift?

A still-alive Seth, who is hiding his decapitation quite well, backs up his new partner, saying that Bud has adhered to the rules of the union, and therefore, should stay instated into the group. Believing his time to be running short, Big John stays behind while Bud goes forward, with John running out of ammo, then setting off what seems like a giant bomb attached to his chest. Bud’s ex-wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) is planning to move away with their child, Paige (Zion Broadnax), if Bud can’t afford the $10,000 it will cost to put Paige in school and to get her braces.

Snoop Dogg and Jamie Foxx standing next to each other in a cluttered office in Day. (Image credit: Parrish Lewis/Netflix). Vampires are ...

Playing the role of Troy — a pawn-broker with connections to the vampire-hunting business — is Peter Stormare, who last worked with J.J. Perry on John Wick: Chapter 2. Bud’s neighbor, Heather, is played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo — who made her debut in an action-packed Netflix original movie (2016’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny) and later starred on the platform’s short-lived coming-of-age fantasy seriesThe Society in 2019. As Bud and Jocelyn’s daughter, Paige, we have Zion Broadnax — who has already acquired a lengthy resume in her few years in the business. As Bud’s vampire hunting partner, Seth, we have Dave Franco — certainly no stranger to horror having starred in the 2011’s Fright Night remake, as well as writing and directing The Rental, to name just a few. Look for his name in just about any article related to Batman. Adkins is also part of the MCU, having played one of Kaecilius’ henchman in Doctor Strange in 2016. Making his horror debut as vampire hunter Bud Jablonski in Day Shift is Jamie Foxx, who has done almost everything else under the sun since his stand-up career led to a break-out spot on the In Living Color cast. Lange also has a horror-comedy under his belt with 2016’s Fear Inc., with Abigail Breslin. Dracula and Godbrand on Netflix’s Castlevania. Day Shift is only his latest Netflix collaboration — following Dad Stop Embarrassing Me! and Project Power — and won’t be his last in 2022 with upcoming sci-fi comedy They Cloned Tyrone. Among his other roles, he voiced a sentient joint in Machine Gun Kelly’s Good Mourning. I mean that both in the sense that these creatures of the night are ageless (as long as they drink enough blood, avoid garlic, and don’t get stabbed) and that stories about this classic staple from some of the best horror movies will likely continue to get made until the end of time.

Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) is no ordinary pool boy. Plumbing the depths of Los Angeles, Jablonski has a secret – he's actually a vampire hunter. It turns out ...

Day Shift has a lot to say, too, about the socio-economic landscape of modern L.A. There’s a clear dichotomy between the working-class Black vampire hunter and his white supervisors at the union. That’s the good thing about Day Shift – it’s a film that knows exactly what it is. Soon enough, Day Shift turns into a vampire buddy cop movie with Franco and Foxx becoming the vampire-slaughtering odd couple we never knew we wanted. It’s not quite a straight-up vampire movie, with a lot more going on beneath the bloody, vampire-busting façade. Foxx, Franco, and Snoop Dogg tear down the walls, laying bare a dark, cruel Los Angeles that puts a twisted spin on real-life SoCal sensibilities. Perry’s background as a stunt coordinator is felt throughout as Day Shift offers up some of the most intense vampire fights you’ll see on screen. Jablonski may not be the best pool boy in the world, but he’s a decent vampire hunter and an even better dad. These little touches elevate Day Shift from a rote vampire action flick to something more. Kicked out of the union for a long list of code violations, he’s down on his luck and then some. Jablonski is a bona fide badass and smarter than he seems, and Foxx plays it perfectly, walking the line between wise-cracking smartass and genuinely ingenious vampire hunter. He’s forced to turn to back-alley merchants to shift his trophies – fangs collected from the vampires he’s slain. Day Shift is a ruthless, bloodthirsty romp through all the traditional vampire cliches. and that’s just the realtors.On top of that, there are plenty of vampires, too.

Also starring Dave Franco, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Meagan Good, Karla Souza, Steve Howey, Scott Adkins, and the legendary Snoop Dogg himself, this action comedy ...

So will there be a Day Shift sequel? There is no official news of a Day Shift sequel at this time. The directorial debut for martial artist and stuntman J.J. Perry, and written by Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten, Day Shift stars Foxx as a divorced father who’s just trying to make enough money at his working-class job to afford his daughter’s private school tuition.

Stuntman-turned-director JJ Perry used his stunt and action experience to create vampire-slaying mayhem.

“He’s very visual,” Bordizzo explained. Bordizzo plays a katana-wielding vampire in the film that fights alongside Foxx, cutting enemy vampires in half with outstanding acrobatics. In “ Day Shift,” Perry used his extensive knowledge of stunts and action scenes to create vampire-slaying sequences with garlic grenades, katanas and silver bullets. The supporting cast is rounded out by Meagan Good, Natasha Liu Bordizzo and Zion Broadnax. And in Perry’s eyes, directing his first feature film wasn’t that tall of a task. And hopefully we’ll be doing it again.” “I’ve been directing second unit for 20 years now, which is arguably harder to do than first unit,” Perry said.

Day Shift filmmaker JJ Perry says the Netflix vampire movie was much smaller in scale when he signed on.

So hopefully, if we get to do another Day Shift — a Night Shift or Graveyard Shift — we’ll get to come over the hill and do it in Hollywood and Downtown. I do it because it’s a lot of fun, and it’s a business and I get to do all kinds of wild shit. And I’ll be honest, I was scared to death about who was gonna play Seth. As soon as Jamie signed on, I was like, “OK, who can volley with that dude?” You can’t put a lightweight in there with Mike Tyson. It was Jamie that said, “Hey, have a look at Dave Franco.” As soon as I met Dave, I knew I had the right tool. He was one of the first people I met when I got out of the Army. He was a budding stuntman, as well, and we were both starting out in the business. It’s been a longtime movement to get stunts recognized by the Academy and in mainstream awards shows. Absolutely. I chose Day Shift because it’s the world of the hunters that hide in plain sight. And then there’s the world of the vampires that hide in plain sight. As a stunt coordinator, you become a department head which kind of informs what you have to do as a director because you have to interface with all these different departments. It really sets the tone for the rest of the movie, and also for your style as a director. I actually tried to pitch this to the last 35 or 40 directors that I’ve worked with, but they [didn’t get it.] And I was like, OK, cool. I stumbled upon this reverse photography with contortionists back in, like, 2014 on a movie I did in Hungary. I tried to pitch it to the director, but he wasn’t having it. With a martial arts background dating back to childhood — he got his black belt in Tae Kwon Do at the age of 12 — Perry never intended to join the Hollywood scene.

The new Netflix film, which liberally mixes action, horror and comedy, stars Jamie Foxx as a San Fernando Valley pool cleaner who doubles as an infamous vampire ...

I know there’s some in the Valley but there’s a lot more on this side of the hill, man I’ll be Koreatown, go down to West LA you go down to where the studios are. And I think you know, having Chad as a producer, I think that attracted some names to it as well. When I got out of the army, I moved to the Valley and it was this wacky mystical place. I just brought the 90s back to the Valley and actually got kicked out of a couple locations up there for being a little too rowdy. So now you shoot in the Valley and all of a sudden people go, “Holy shit. And that’s how that’s how we chose to treat it in this movie. People said, “Let’s do another ‘John Wick.’” And I was like, “Well, I already did ‘John Wick’ with Chad.” They knew I was in the army and said, “Let’s a sniper with PTSD.” And it’s like, “Well, the world is kind of dark right now, I want to do an action comedy with horror. For the last 10/15 years, I had a bag of tricks that I pulled out and dumped out on the floor. But I stumbled into the stunt business with the likes of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch and a bunch of our generation in 1990 and ’91. The stunt business and the second unit business was being overseen by a bunch of stunt cowboys that came from the ’80s and ’70s. And they’re all of our big bros. I want to do a mash-up.” That’s how I kind of ended up for me. You’d take a scene out of “Meals on Wheels” or a scene from “Armor of God” and we would recreate it with a video camera and even cut it before Final Cut Pro, we would cut it from tape to tape with two VHS tapes. When Final Cut, and Adobe and all of the editing software became a consumer product, we all bought that.

J.J. Perry breaks down his directorial debut in Day Shift, working with Jamie Foxx, the potential for sequels, and what makes vampires fun.

I would reckon if we were going to do a Day Shift 2, and this is a big if, that we would probably do something in Hollywood because there are a lot of vampires in Hollywood, if you know what I mean. I already have got a whole list of new vampires and new ways to kill them. All of the apex stunt performers are all millennials and all Gen Y and Gen Z. I am Gen X. I am 54. I moved to the Valley when I got to LA. When you move to Southern California, it's hard to move right into West L.A. or Hollywood. You kind of have to start in the Valley because it's cheap. When I turned the Zoom on, I didn't imagine it was going to be him. I thought it was going to be some of my stunt buddies pranking me, but it was Jamie Foxx wanting to do Day Shift. The iPad is here. There was a fight double, and then there was a contortionist double. I was like, "Shut the fuck up." Zombieland is the only thing that is remotely like it recently that I can think of that I have seen. Getting Jamie Foxx was almost like winning the Mega Lottery. I got a call saying, "Oh, Jamie is going to Zoom with you this week." I made Bud as much like me as I could because I got out of the army. I didn't want the vampires to be bumbling idiots or the union.

Day Shift is everything fans have come to expect from a vampire movie. The Netflix action flick starring Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco is full of all the gore and ...

It feels similar to Insecure or the early seasons of Sex and the City but with the family dynamics and cultural details that those shows were missing, that make this show that much richer. It’s current and relatable as hell, and tackles not only the family and career aspect that young adults deal with but also gives a closeup (and real as hell) look at dating in 2022 but from the male perspective. Perhaps the only reason Gene stops is out of the love and affection of the elderly, as displayed at the start of the series. Insecure star and writer Jean Elie is setting out to tell the story of he and his Haitian family’s life through Send Help. The series, created alongside Mike Gauyo, is loosely based on Elie’s life and his journey of making it out in Hollywood while he and his family deal with the tragic passing of his big brother. What I love about it, in particular, is how well the stakes of it are established through the course of the episode—primarily upon a rewatch. It’s a masterful moment for Seehorn that also functions as a culmination of everything she’s done on the show—which, considering all the other monumental performances she’s given on this show, that’s saying something. While a lot of attention is (rightfully!) placed on the last ten minutes of “The Giant Squid,” plenty of other excitement is found throughout the episode. Part of what makes “Squid” so exciting is seeing how Harper (Myha’la Herrold), Robert (Harry Lawtey), and Yas (Marisa Abela) all respond to the challenges of interacting with older mentors and then how they succeed or fail accordingly. He realizes that in order for the business to be lucrative, he has to do it through a union in order to get the money he needs to keep his family together. Instead of portraying the roles from the movie, the series sets up a new crew of players—and doesn’t look to shy away from exploring social matters of the 1940s era like racism and closeted queerness. With series like Swagger, All American, and Winning Time, it feels like we’re in the middle of a sports television renaissance. AllBlk is launching Send Help, a dark comedy from some of the minds behind Insecure about a first-generation Haitian man struggling to make it in Hollywood after a family tragedy.

The movie features garden variety vampires and plenty of cartoon blood-spurting, but the always watchable Jamie Foxx goes above and beyond the call of duty.

(Even Dave Franco’s Seth, the hapless union rep charged with tailing Bud on the job, eventually masters some of the necessary skills.) The action scenes are choppy but brisk, and there’s plenty of cartoon blood-spurting, de rigueur in a work such as this. Day Shift is the story of a guy who’s able to reclaim his past glory—and get some of those all-important dental-insurance benefits—but it isn’t easy: union honcho Ralph (Eric Lange) doesn’t want to let him back in, but one of Bud’s old pals, a union member in good standing, advocates for him. But Foxx goes above and beyond the call of duty, seemingly without even trying. Day Shift, directed by J.J. Perry and written by Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten, is designed to be fast, gory and silly, and it’s all of those things. He and his wife, Joceyln (Meagan Good), have split, and Jocelyn is now threatening to whisk the couple’s young daughter, Paige (Zion Broadnax), away to Florida in the hopes of giving her a more stable upbringing. Vampire entertainment is as eternal as vampires themselves, and from the ever-fertile dust of this genre springs Netflix’s Day Shift, in which Jamie Foxx plays Bud, a modern-day San Fernando Valley vamp hunter fallen on hard times.