Day Shift is a new Netflix original that was all over the map. It started strong but then threatened to become a goofy buddy cop movie… and then exploded with exploding vampire gore and inventive kills, and then slowed down, and then made me laugh out loud. It’s kind of a mess but I came away pretty entertained.

The flick stars Jamie Foxx as a pool cleaner / vampire hunter in Los Angeles with the unlikely name of Jablonsky (which sounds like a name a hack screenwriter came up quickly: “Jablonsky. Jenkins. You head that way.”). He doesn’t work for the local vampire hunter union but needs them union wages for his daughter’s private school. He gets saddled with Dave Franco as a union rep and they go on the hunt for vamps on the day shift (which doesn’t pay as well as the night shift).

Foxx is more-or-less going through the motions of a big noisy action movie. He’s ok and occasionally funny but he doesn’t bring much punch to the party. He gets an amiable assist from Snoop Dogg and, less fortunately, Dave Franco. Franco’s dopey guy routine threatens to turn the movie into a dopey buddy cop movie… but they give him a twist that I found pretty amusing (if a little unexplained in terms of the flick’s own supernatural rules).

Speaking of which, the vampires follow a lot of the typical vampire rules – stake (or wooden bullets) to the heart, decapitation, no reflection, etc. They are, however, very gumby vampires… a lot of (CGI-assisted) twisty, foldy body contortions during the fight scenes.

These fight scenes are, in fact, where my lizard brain perked up and was most entertained. A lot of (black) blood ‘n guts and gnarly dismemberments in a “now THAT was pretty cool” kind of way. It reminded me of a less serious version of Blade’s two great action set pieces.

Obviously they spent more time thinking of ways to de-limb a vampire than they did the script. A lot of this is CGI-assisted and the quality varies from shot to shot. But I came away thinking I’d seen some pretty creative and original gags. There’s even a pretty exciting car chase with some practical stunts and a really great drone chase sequence that was much better than similar shots from recent films.

There’s a laugh-out-loud reference to an earlier, better vampire comedy. It’s not that it’s particularly hilarious but that it’s a clever bit of meta humor that works for the actor reading the line as well as being a winking tip of the hat to The Lost Boys.

I wish I could give this a higher score but some of the comedy is dopey, Foxx kinda walks through it, the villain is kinda boring, and there’s not a lot of story that’s worth writing home about. But I did enjoy myself… I laughed often enough and the action scenes were consistently inventive, splattery, and fun. My lizard brain was satisfied.

Score: 84