Jamie Foxx

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.

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.

Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg and Dave Franco are vampire slayers in a Netflix flick that's fast, fun and confusing, but above all else, fresh.

All of it contributes to a weird, outlandish and funny concoction that truly could be "only in LA." In this world, vampire fangs, the one body part a vampire can't regenerate, are part of a huge black market industry. Enter vampire hunters, a pseudo-underground network of trained professionals who hunt and kill vampires by any means necessary -- most commonly through the classic method of decapitation -- not only for human safety, but with an added incentive.

"Day Shift" is built almost perfectly to be the kind of thing you might, after some scrolling, absentmindedly click to watch on Netflix and end of watching ...

“Day Shift” a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong violence and gore, and language. Yet the slapdash vibe of “Day Shift” has its charms. Thinly sketched as it is, “Day Shift” has a retro vibe. There’s a this-is-barely-a-story feel to “Day Shift,” but not always unpleasantly so. There’s also a labor commentary somewhere in here with Bud, kicked out of the vampire hunter union, trying to get back in to secure higher rates for his kills. They seem to be especially populous in the San Fernando Valley, which may not be surprising to Californians but is about as far a departure you can get from the aristocratic, European origins of the genre.

Day Shift is a wildly uneven but almost always entertaining horror comedy with a great Jamie Foxx and one of the best action scenes of the year.

The film's emphasis on unions and the ability for the underclass to team together in such a fashion to fight the bloodsucking elite has unmistakable proletariat vibes. Despite the script's weakness, Foxx and (especially) Franco are charming, funny, and likable, and Perry keeps things accelerated in such a slick and energetic way that the film is usually entertaining regardless. Unfortunately, it's a high that is never repeated throughout Day Shift, which makes the rest of the film feel like a downward slide into superfluity. It's an entrancing scene that's simultaneously gory in its brutality and immensely intelligent in design, and makes for one of the best opening scenes of 2022. Perry hired real contortionists for several of the vampires in Day Shift, and when mixed with the stuntman's choreographic brilliance and Foxx's own stunt work, it's truly a sight to behold. He has an energy similar to Bruce Willis in Die Hard here, and seemingly ad-libs some great little comic non-sequiturs throughout the film with total ease (like when he orders yogurt and asks if there's a Black History Month discount).

In Netflix's “Day Shift,” Oscar winner Jamie Foxx plays a pool cleaner who also slays vampires, and who also must come up with $10K lest he lose contact ...

And that he’s paired with a wimpy bureaucrat, Seth ( Dave Franco), who’s ordered to keep tabs on him (as a way of kicking him out of the Union for good) but eventually transforms from narc to begrudging partner to BFF? The balance between brutality and jokiness is consistently off; the film wants to wow its audience with inventive showdowns and yet undercuts its gory violence’s impact with cornball cartoonishness, as in a scene that pairs Bud and Seth with two brothers (Steve Howey and Scott Adkins) who, besides being adept at their Van Helsing-inspired profession, like to share each other’s gum. He’s the alpha of all alphas, and consequently as monotonous a presence as his polar opposite Seth, a whining nerd who shows up for creature-stalking duty in a bland suit and, at every sign of danger, pees his pants—a running gag that’s emblematic of the proceedings’ wit. Would you believe that he's eventually allowed back into the Union thanks to the aid of his friend Big John ( Snoop Dogg), where he’s yelled at for his habitual insubordination by a chief (Eric Lange) sitting behind a big office desk? No matter that ignorance, bloodsuckers are lurking practically everywhere, nesting in abandoned bowling alleys and shopping malls and even walking around during the day courtesy of Audrey (Karla Souza). A star San Fernando Valley realtor and ancient “uber vamp,” Audrey is buying up the area’s properties in order to populate them with her minions, whom she’s also empowering with a heavy-duty lotion that lets them survive in the radiant sunshine. It’s easy to imagine first-time director J.J. Perry and screenwriters Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten in the pitch meeting for Day Shift, selling it as a Lethal Weapon riff with hungry vampires and John Wick ultra-violence.

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.

Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco chatted with “Extra's” Rachel Lindsay about their Netflix movie “Day Shift,” revealing they wrote a song and star in a video for ...

And all of a sudden, I'm a musician.” Jamie and Dave also broke the news about writing a song and making a music video. I watched him do the same.” But I said, ‘Hey, I can't do the movie unless I get Dave Franco’… I'm a comic snob. And she went with it and so now we'll be in the next Netflix phenom after this phenom ‘Day Shift.’” Jamie also dishes on bringing Cameron Diaz out of retirement for his upcoming film “Back in Action.”

Complex caught up with Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco to chat about their new vampire movie 'Day Shift,' working together, and if there is a sequel in store.

The premise of the movie is straightforward, so fans of this genre should know exactly what to expect going in—mindless, high-energy entertainment. I’ve even pitched him movies, I said I gotta be in business with this guy and now finally here we are,” Foxx tells Complex. “I don’t call it a coming-out party, because we already know how great he is, but to me, he got a chance to flex every muscle that I knew he would be able to do and just take over the film. The film follows the story of a guy named Bud Jablonski (Foxx). Bud is a professional vampire hunter and killer but was kicked out of the vampire hunters union for breaking the rules and regulations.