Day Shift

Grade: D+

Day Shift, a new Netflix Original movie, stars Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, and Snoop Dogg as vampire hunters. The premise sounds great, and the greatness stops right there. It has the camp, production values, script, intelligence, common sense, score, cinematography, editing, fight choreography, dramatic effect, entertainment, and overall quality of an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. At least those were only half an hour.

Foxx stars as Budd, who poses as a freelance pool cleaner in the San Fernando valley. It’s a cover for his real occupation: hunting and killing vampires, then extracting their fangs to sell them. They go for a surprising amount. He is impeccable at it, as all killings happen extremely easily with as little suspense as possible. The vampires have read the screenplay, and display the manners to take turns – often politely waiting to attack him one by one.

In the midst of the exposition and boring fight scenes, Day Shift sticks its toe in the pool of the mismatched buddy comedy. Due to so many violations, Budd is on very thin ice with Ralph, his union boss (Eric Lange), so he sends Seth from the office (Dave Franco) out in the field with Budd to babysit. I’m not completely flunking this movie because there are a few funny lines that did manage to land successfully. Everyone at the office seems to hate Carol, who has a desk next to Seth’s. The Franco character is upset that Carol ate some of his food from the break room fridge yet again, and says “I’m gonna fart in my yogurt tomorrow and you’re gonna eat my fart.” The fact that Lange’s character looks like Joe Exotic and harps on and on about Carol wasn’t lost on me.

I’d rather talk about From Dusk Till Dawn, which sets the gold standard when it comes to campy silly vampire movies. It has exciting action, characters with depth, gore that manages to disturb, and fun set pieces. It’s not a high-brow cinematic masterpiece, but it is one of the coolest films I’ve seen. With Day Shift, there’s no tension. No stakes, other than the…you know what I mean. It all feels like a 3rd or 4th straight-to-video sequel to From Dusk Till Dawn, with nobody from the original project still involved. I felt like I’d eaten the yogurt intended for Carol when I finished watching. Did you know this grade existed?

Grade: D+