Day Shift Review: A Perceptive Vampire-Hunting Comedy, but Only Up to a Point

It’s fun imagining the elevator pitch for Day Shift: “Blade: Late Capitalism,” or “Buffy the Debt Slayer.” Jamie Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a working-class stiff who moonlights—or, rather, sunlights—as a pool cleaner to obscure his real occupation as a vampire hunter. The film’s opening scene, of Bud, on a warm, bright San Fernando day, slipping into a home that’s darkened by covered windows and so cold that his breath fogs up, is a cute little grace note—until our hero stumbles upon and has to deal with that undead lurking within.

This opening fight scene sets the tone of the film’s action: gory to an outlandish degree, filled with choreography that leans on the vampires’ contortionist movements, and, in such moments as a vampire vomiting black bile that Bud subsequently slips in, even slapstick. Director J.J. Perry has spent more than 30 years working as a stunt performer and coordinator, which provides more than a little explanation of how the first-time director achieves a general coherence with his action scenes that eludes more seasoned contemporary filmmakers.

Things are further grounded by Foxx’s performance, which exudes a gruff, too-old-for-this-shit classicality that inoculates Day Shift against the cutesy, overly referential humor that dominates modern American genre cinema. Bud, in desperate need of money for the all-too-normal pressures of paying tuition and dental bills for his young daughter, Paige (Zion Broadnax), has no time for pleasantries, and Foxx moves with a sense of purpose that keeps the film’s first half consistently propulsive through the most expository scenes.

This extends to glimpses of the entire commercial underground that makes vampire hunting so lucrative, a realm that even includes a strictly codified union for mercenaries. This sets up a detour into world-building that the film nobly ignores, instead letting the audience imagine the wider shadow economy that’s sprung up around vampire trophies.

Chiefly, the introduction of the hunter’s union exists to saddle Bud with Seth (Dave Franco), a representative under clear orders to gather evidence that will justify kicking the trigger-happy Bud out of the union for good. Franco brings a dash of contemporary comic brio to the film, as the introverted Seth speaks in a nervous stammer and is prone to going on tangents about pop culture, as in a scene where he earnestly defends the Twilight sequels. Seth’s energy threatens to throw off the film’s momentum, but he develops a quick rapport with Bud that tempers the most two-dimensional aspects of each. For a long spell, Day Shift plays like an ’80s buddy comedy, and its charm brings a certain breeziness to an already taut film.

So smoothly and concisely does the film flow, in fact, that right around the time it feels as if it’s about to head toward a climax, viewers might be surprised to realize that there’s an entire hour left. If Day Shift’s first half is an unexpectedly focused, consistent pleasure, the second sags under the weight of needing to seemingly satisfy a strict runtime requirement. And it does so not by building the importance of the villain, an ancient vampire named Audrey (Karla Souza) with a score to settle with Bud, but through a series of action scenes that lack any meaningful connective narrative tissue or even a sense of escalation.

The choreography that was so striking at the top of the film gets recycled across set pieces where the only thing that changes is the background (a McMansion here, an underground lair there). Despite a wry twist that forces Seth into more active combat duty, there’s little to differentiate these later scenes from earlier ones, and the manner in which the film sprints from one to the other, with scant breathing room in between, robs each of its potential impact.

Also frustrating is how little is done to develop Audrey as a villain beyond giving her a very personal grudge against Bud. Day Shift devotes so much of its first half to reinforcing its class-conscious outlook that it’s a particular waste not to build on Audrey’s cover as a real-estate developer, a vision of literally soulless expansion compared to Bud’s constant struggle to pay for the basic necessities of life. In the end, the curve away from such contrasts leaves Day Shift feeling deflated and without purpose despite its very promising start.