The Flick Chicks

Jacqueline Monahan's Movie Reviews

Day Shift | Jamie Foxx, Meagan Good, Peter Stormare, Dave Franco, Eric Lange | Review

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3sm The Flick Chicks movie rating for this film is MEDIOCRE Jacqueline Monahan

Jacqueline  Monahan

Las Vegas Round The Clock
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Jacqueline Monahan is an educator for the GEAR UP program at UNLV.
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3lg The Flick Chicks movie rating for this film is MEDIOCRE

Day Shift | Jamie Foxx, Meagan Good, Peter Stormare, Dave Franco, Eric Lange | Review


Professional pool cleaner Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) has a unique side gig. When he’s not fishing dead racoons out of private pools, he’s hunting and killing vampires. Bud’s 10-year-old daughter, Paige, (Zion Broadnax) attends an expensive private school AND she needs braces. Estranged wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) wants to move to Florida with Paige. Bud needs to up his game selling vampire fangs to keep his daughter in town.

Pawnbroker pal Troy (Peter Stormare) can’t pay Bud the large amount of cash he needs, so Bud is forced to return to a secret organization known as The Vampire Hunter’s Union, housed behind a dry-cleaner’s storefront. Dismissed for being an unpredictable wildcard, Bud wants to be rehired and gain union membership so the fangs from his vampire kills can command top dollar. Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg) a tall vampire-killing cowboy that’s just too cool for any room he’s in, is Bud’s mentor/sponsor.

Union supervisor Ralph Seeger (Eric Lange) grants Bud one more chance at union membership, but on the condition that he only work the titular day shift, not the more profitable night shift. He also attaches a human handcuff in the person of union rep Seth (Dave Franco) to tag along and report any code violations. Prissy and nerdy, Seth contrasts Bud’s brash killer persona to form an odd couple partnership on a wild ride, driven to extraction (I couldn’t help it). Seth is also prone to vomiting and loss of bladder control. The reluctant duo begins to hunt the undead, opposites at every turn.

In present-day Los Angeles, vampires walk among the living thanks to a special sunscreen created by uber vamp(ire) and property developer Audrey San Fernando (Karla Souza). Her product allows vampires to endure sunlight for 20 minutes. She has a habit of slipping Spanish words into her purring threats, and she’s out to destroy Bud’s family as revenge for one of his former kills.
Bud just wants money and had no idea he’s on a collision course with the murderous Audrey.

Day Shift embraces a whole new vampire mythology which includes a hierarchy of vampires: juvies, spiders, ubers, southerns and easterns, all with their own characteristics, and ranked by age, the older, the better. Vampires cannot reproduce, only “turn” others into vampires. No sparkly Twilight here. They cry blood, have enhanced olfactory capabilities (detecting the scent of a human from inanimate objects they’ve touched), and are vulnerable to African mpingo hardwood/garlic bullets. Yes, garlic is still around – even in grenade form. Silver is made into thin chains and used to decapitate the undead. No gore is spared, ever.

There are several fast paced, almost exquisite fight scenes, choreographed with lightning speed and featuring maximum carnage. The violence is acrobatic and full of contortion. Creatures get blown through doors and walls. Guts explode and heads roll. Violence is so pervasive it becomes incidental, almost filler. And yet, there’s comedy woven throughout the bloody limbs and severed heads. Bud and Seth spar and clash, providing comic relief in the midst of several wild “gore-gies” of gunfire, decapitation, amputation, and contortion.

During one frenzied battle, an incredulous Bud asks himself, “This motherfucker threw me UP the stairs?”

Stuntman J.J. Perry (F9-The Fast Saga) makes his directorial debut and screenwriters Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead) and newcomer Tyler Tice go “all in” when it comes to graphic images and language, preferring a “because I said so” style of film narrative. You’ll have the best experience if you don’t question anything that happens.

There are a number of what abouts, how comes, and hey, wait a minutes that crop up toward the end of the film, convenient plot devices that make no sense but are explained away with a line or two. If you choose to surf the slaughterhouse of cascading corpuscles, check the part of your brain that questions developments that fit the plot, but not the film’s own proprietary physics.

A tolerance for gore will determine whether the viewer finds Day Shift bloody good or bloody awful.

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