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Day Shift
A veteran film stunts coordinator named JJ Perry makes a less than stellar debut as a director with Day Shift an overheated and over the top supernatural thriller that tries to substitute stunts and visual effects for a story of sense and logic.
This 2022 film is set in San Fernando and stars Oscar winner Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski, a divorced man with a young daughter whose family thinks he works as a pool cleaner. Not long after we see him clean a pool, we see Bud enter the house where his real profession is revealed: Bud hunts and kills vampires for fun and for profit. He now needs a serious shot of profit in order to keep his daughter in is life. He is given a final mission by the organization where he used to be employed, as long as a young office geek named Seth (Dave Franco) accompanies and documents his actions.
This movie pretty much confuses the viewer from jump...his opening battle with a vampire who looks like an old lady comes with no backstory behind it. We then learn that vampire hunting is like a Fortune 500 business in Los Angeles and that it is unionized like longshoremen or Teamsters. Bud used to be part of the organization but made a lot of mistakes resulting in the loss of his union card which forces him to turn to a veteran hunter named Big John (Snoop Dogg) to vouch for him so that he can earn the money he needs. Apparently, there is a lot of money in vampire fangs and Bud thinks this is the quickest way to get the money he needs.
First of all, I don't get that he was able to keep what he did from his ex-wife and daughter all this time. The connection between the old lady vampire and the primary vampire was a little hard to swallow. This screenplay's conception of what a vampire is was a little confusing as well...the vampires in this film seem more like zombies and have varying degrees of power and survival skills. Some are taken out by a single gun shot and some keep getting up and coming at our hero. A lot of vampires get beheaded during the proceedings, but when Seth finds himself beheaded, he's able to put his head back on his body? Seriously? Eventually, the vampires start outnumbering the good guys and just seem to be toying with them. This is when interest definitely starts to wane.
Jamie Foxx, whose film career has been doing a slow and methodic decline since winning the Oscar for Ray, must have really needed the money. I thought Dave Franco and Snoop Dogg were terrific though, making the most of the confusing material. It's dark and gory, displaying some technical panache, but as a complete movie experience, it definitely misses the mark.
A veteran film stunts coordinator named JJ Perry makes a less than stellar debut as a director with Day Shift an overheated and over the top supernatural thriller that tries to substitute stunts and visual effects for a story of sense and logic.
This 2022 film is set in San Fernando and stars Oscar winner Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski, a divorced man with a young daughter whose family thinks he works as a pool cleaner. Not long after we see him clean a pool, we see Bud enter the house where his real profession is revealed: Bud hunts and kills vampires for fun and for profit. He now needs a serious shot of profit in order to keep his daughter in is life. He is given a final mission by the organization where he used to be employed, as long as a young office geek named Seth (Dave Franco) accompanies and documents his actions.
This movie pretty much confuses the viewer from jump...his opening battle with a vampire who looks like an old lady comes with no backstory behind it. We then learn that vampire hunting is like a Fortune 500 business in Los Angeles and that it is unionized like longshoremen or Teamsters. Bud used to be part of the organization but made a lot of mistakes resulting in the loss of his union card which forces him to turn to a veteran hunter named Big John (Snoop Dogg) to vouch for him so that he can earn the money he needs. Apparently, there is a lot of money in vampire fangs and Bud thinks this is the quickest way to get the money he needs.
First of all, I don't get that he was able to keep what he did from his ex-wife and daughter all this time. The connection between the old lady vampire and the primary vampire was a little hard to swallow. This screenplay's conception of what a vampire is was a little confusing as well...the vampires in this film seem more like zombies and have varying degrees of power and survival skills. Some are taken out by a single gun shot and some keep getting up and coming at our hero. A lot of vampires get beheaded during the proceedings, but when Seth finds himself beheaded, he's able to put his head back on his body? Seriously? Eventually, the vampires start outnumbering the good guys and just seem to be toying with them. This is when interest definitely starts to wane.
Jamie Foxx, whose film career has been doing a slow and methodic decline since winning the Oscar for Ray, must have really needed the money. I thought Dave Franco and Snoop Dogg were terrific though, making the most of the confusing material. It's dark and gory, displaying some technical panache, but as a complete movie experience, it definitely misses the mark.