Day Shift – Film Review

An LA vampire hunter has a week to come up with the cash to pay for his kid’s tuition and braces. Trying to make a living these days just might kill him.

J.J. Perry‘s new vampire action comedy Day Shift is exactly the kind of movie you’ll expect it to be when going in. If you honestly go into this film expecting anything even remotely award-worthy, then you’re going in with the completely wrong mindset. I would tell you to go into the film and turn your brain off because you’ll enjoy it then, but the truth is, you likely won’t. This is a disappointingly boring movie that wastes the talent of Jamie Foxx, thrusting him into a film with a script that’s so bland and uninspired to the point of hilarity.

This honestly could have been a wild and fun ride. That’s what we need right now. Why does it seem like the month of August is completely devoid of anything exciting this year? Almost every year, we have at least a couple of Hollywood blockbusters coming out in August but this year we have none, and sadly, Day Shift isn’t an exception. From beginning to end, this whole movie is essentially Jamie Foxx’s character Bud going around and finding himself in more trouble than he hoped for.

It’s almost like a slapstick comedy in that sense but without actually being funny, and since this is supposed to be a comedy, that’s not a good thing. Someone that I wanted to see more of in this film was Snoop Dogg as Big John Elliott. He gets some stuff to do every so often but I wanted more. I mean come on – this is a vampire action comedy with Snoop Dogg in it. The opportunities for comedy were off the charts, and yet Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten‘s script don’t allow him to fulfill his full potential.

But let’s be real, most people are probably going to want to watch this for the action sequences alone, and that’s fine. Fine, that is, if you want to settle for mediocrity. There’s nothing downright bad about the action here, but there’s also nothing downright good, either. It’s just kind of… there. You may have fun watching Foxx and company slay some vampires in the moment, but you’ll probably forget about it a few hours later.

It also doesn’t help that the film’s main villain is extremely cliché with motivations that are practically non-existent. Even by the time the movie comes to a close, it’s quite difficult to pinpoint exactly what this person’s goals were. The character work in this film is sadly quite poor. Heck, even Foxx’s character feels relatively one-note most of the time, as does Dave Franco’s character Seth. If you want to put on a movie just to sit back and relax, there are much better options out there.

Day Shift features a fun Jamie Foxx performance but is an otherwise tediously boring vampire action comedy that doesn’t execute its premise strongly enough.