Day Shift

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"Day Shift is one of the most pleasant surprises of the year!

As expected, it doesn't reinvent the wheel - formulaic screenplay and paper-thin characters - but the care and dedication involved in the stunt choreography, minimal use of CGI, and extraordinary camerawork (Toby Oliver) make this project packed with action - sometimes even too much - one of the most entertaining vampire movies of the last decade.

Jamie Foxx serves well enough as the badass protagonist in J. J. Perry's first feature film - the former stuntman impresses in such a way that he could easily become a well-recognized director within the action genre.

It's not a bad plan for a weekend watch with family and friends."

Rating: B-

Overall : Day Shift is not without flaws but is a blast from start to finish with great action and fun characters.

Did not expect to enjoy this as much as I did! Day Shift brings a fresh new vibe to the vampire hunter genre, with most of the movie taking place in the bright sunny suburbs of LA. The action and fight sequences near John Wick-level choreography (which is not surprising since Chad Stahelski is involved) and the world built by Day Shift is intriguing and worth further exploration in future films. Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco have fun buddy cop chemistry, and some of the other characters might not be well developed but are still entertaining. I would love to see more from this franchise.

A cliche wrapped up in cliche. He's down on his luck, his wife's leaving him with his kid, he needs money....he hunts vampires in between cleaning pools...

Day Shift is an anaemic vampire flick, that has teeth, in the same way as grandad has dentures.Unoriginal, slow, cheesy (in a bad a way) with moderately watchable action, which arrives late.

In summary, a thoroughly mediocre action film with a sprinkling of vampires. Enough said.

I liked it. It's good weekend movie or late night flick. It's not terribly deep but it has good special effects and good quality acting. The action scenes, when there needs to be action, are good. There is a good flow from scene to scene which staves off that dreaded "grade B film" feel.

The comedy is good and not overly done or cheesy. I liked the sector chief, he was funny for being the grimey-boss. And Snoop Dogg was okay in the same laid back way he is. I still believe he fit the role of Jimmy Bones a lot better; though that movie was definitely for the $5 bin at Walmart. I believe Snoop would do very well as a Master Vamp or boss-guy-sitting-in-the chair type figure. As long as he doesn't have to emote. He does very well in line delivery which makes great comedy if you know how to write for him.

All the actors did well in their roles. The villaness was good in her role, very arrogant & dispicable (nice on the eyes). The two vamp-killing brothers were both funny and performed great in their action scenes. And the speical effects, car chase scenes, and both the Home invasion and Nest scenes were top notch. The studio got their moneies worth when they hired the stuntman company.

I do think they went a little hard with the "wimpy" sidekick thing. I didn't expect what happened to Franco's character to happen. I thought maybe he'd get his act togther when the circumstances got intense, but the writers took him in another direction that suprisingly (though not terribly original) made sense with the story.
And I'm not sure WHY, but I keep getting Dave Franco and Zac Efron confused for one another...? (maybe it's the eyebrows) Franco has been in a number of teen movies and blockbusters...sorta kinda. I liked the Fright Night re-make, Neighbors 1 & 2,(despite Seth Rogan being poison since the Santa Inc. debacle) and the Now You See Me 1 & 2 movies. He's not terrible. He did well for his character (and props to his stuntman) in this movie.

As I said before, this is a good vampire movie. It's not exactly Fright Night, or 30 Days of Night, but definitely holds its own. If I had to give it similarity by comparison, then I would say it leans more toward Dusk til Dawn, than anything else.

Good Luck in your viewing!

-- Bob --