Sure, we'll watch Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg hunt some vampires
We're not made of stone here, and Day Shift sounds genuinely pretty fun
Look, we’re not made of stone here. Pitch us a movie with a simple, straightforward, relatable premise—Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg as blue-collar vampire hunters killing undead gentrifiers in Los Angeles, for instance—and we’ll at least give the thing a look, right? Hence the interested reception today to a new Vanity Fair profile focused on upcoming Netflix movie Day Shift, the movie where, well…see above.
Besides having a pretty good plot hook, Day Shift also has a pedigree of a type that’s paid off pretty well for action movies in the past: The stunt performer to director pipeline, here embodied by director J.J. Perry, whose name has popped up all over the Fast And The Furious and John Wick franchises (with the latter’s director, stunt-performer-turned-director Chad Stahelski, also producing on the film). Hiring a stunt performer as your director isn’t always a recipe for success, of course, but it does tend to make for a bigger focus on practical and physical effects instead of CGI lightshows. (In this case, Perry apparently weirded up his vampires by hiring contortionists—partially put out of work by the pandemic’s crippling effects on the Cirque Du Soleil industry—to play his crawling bloodsuckers.)
Mostly, though, we’re just really into the idea of Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg killing rich vampires. (Somewhat hilariously, Perry is weirdly insistent in the profile that he cast “Calvin Broadus”—Snoop Dogg’s birth name—and not “Snoop Dogg,” in his film, telling his performer that, “I don’t want Snoop to be Big John. I’m hiring Calvin Broadus to play Big John.”) Foxx plays a pool cleaner who moonlights as a slayer of the undead, trying to get back in the good graces of Los Angeles’ trade union of vampire slayers after a number of workplace violations. (Look, we’re not saying Day Shift sounds subtle; we’re saying it sounds fun.) Snoop Dogg plays his guild-connected friend, with Dave Franco and Karla Souza co-starring.
Vanity Fair has some first-look photos at the film, in case your interest has been piqued; Day Shift hits Netflix on August 12.