Day Shift is one of those Netflix films that made itself clear on what it was going for; straight fantastical fun. Though the film was received in a way that places it firmly in the middle of the critical spectrum, that information is little more than fine print when the tradeoff includes watching Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, and Snoop Dogg, armed to the bones with a minigun, slaughter a horde of vampires.
Indeed, with its surprisingly rich yet tragically unexplored lore, such as the history of the union or the nuances between the five different types of vampires referenced in the film, Day Shift seemed to fully embrace a sort of Zach Snyder-esque ethos, and Jamie Foxx, who’s shown an unabashed love for the film to the point of making plans for a franchise, never wastes an opportunity to lay down an enthusiastic anecdote about Day Shift.
In an interview with Collider, Foxx remarked how the union, in particular, made for a curious blue-collar premise, shutting down the comparisons with the film Blade in the process.
I think that’s what’s ingenious about the movie. It makes it blue-collar. It’s like people were saying, “Blade.” I said, “No, you got to see it. It’s not Blade. It’s not any of that.” This is practical. This is a guy harvesting teeth to go get some money, so he could take care of his kid. And it just happens to be the craziest world that we all stumble into.
He would go on to instead compare the film to 2001’s Training Day, in that he finds himself in a dire situation after going after a target he shouldn’t have gone after.
My character’s been in it for a while, but just sort of like in Training Day when Denzel takes the money from the wrong people, and he’s about to… He ends up in his demise, it’s with me, I’m going against his teeth. And I end up killing… That old lady is actually somebody’s daughter. And so, then Karla Souza, who’s incredible in her part, now the stakes become higher. It’s like, “I messed with the wrong vampire in a sense.” So I think that having that union sets us up for that, if we do want to do something more, it’s a great home base, if that makes sense.
Day Shift is available to stream on Netflix.
