Jamie Foxx hunts vampires in Netflix comedy ‘Day Shift’

In the new Netflix action comedy “Day Shift,” Jamie Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a working-class Los Angeles man and divorced father who cleans pools as a cover for his real job of hunting vampires. There’s a this-is-barely-a-story feel to “Day Shift,” but not always unpleasantly so, writes AP Film Writer Jake Coyle in his review. It’s built almost perfectly to be the kind of thing you might, after some scrolling, absentmindedly click to watch on Netflix and end of watching for its sheer watchability. “Day Shift” is almost retro in its uncomplicated approach to genre. It begins streaming Friday.

This year marks the centennial anniversary of F. W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu,” a long time for us humans but only a blip for vampires.

If you were looking to celebrate the birthday of that silent classic, which still casts a long and ominous shadow over all vampires films that have followed, you could do it with what’s perhaps its exact opposite: the new Netflix action-comedy “Day Shift,” with Jamie Foxx as a San Fernando Valley vampire hunter.

“Day Shift,” which begins streaming Friday, has aims much closer to something like “Zombieland” than Murnau. Foxx plays Bud Jablonski, a workingclass Los Angeles man and divorced father who cleans pools as a cover for his real job of hunting vampires. They seem to be especially populous in the San Fernando Valley, which may not be surprising to Californians but is about as far a departure you can get from the aristocratic, European origins of the genre. Plus, “What We Do in the Shadows” already has Staten Island covered.

“Day Shift,” the directorial debut of former stuntman J.J. Perry and written by Tyler Tice and “Army of the Dead” scribe Shay Hatten, has placed a familiar tale — a down-and-out single father trying to prove his worth — into a vampire movie. There’s also a labor commentary somewhere in here with Bud, kicked out of the vampire hunter union, trying to get back in to secure higher rates for his kills.

Andrew Cooper / Associated Press This image released by Netflix shows Jamie Foxx, left, and Snoop Dogg in a scene from “Day Shift.”