Why Day Shift’s vampires move like that, and what the director’s stunt background brought to Netflix’s new action comedy
J.J. Perry is betting you’ve never seen vampires quite like this before.
Sure, many vampire movies have broken from the haunting, deliberate shamble of Nosferatu — the Blade vampires, for instance, or the vampires from the Twilight series — but Netflix’s new movie Day Shift takes things to another creepy level, bringing in contortionist work and an unusual camera technique to amp up the horror element of this action horror comedy.
The movie, which stars Jamie Foxx as a vampire hunter trying to get back in the good graces of the Vampire Hunters’ Union and also make money for his estranged family, was released on Netflix Friday and is the directorial debut of longtime stunt man and action coordinator J.J. Perry.
Perry is prolific. The stunt man turned coordinator turned action director has worked on everything from big franchises (Blade, Avatar, Iron Man, the Fast and Furious franchise), to Oscar-nominated movies (Argo, Warrior, Django Unchained) as well as many, many other excellent action flicks (I’d be remiss not to mention three personal favorites: Blood and Bone, Undisputed 2: Last Man Standing, and the Melissa McCarthy vehicle Spy).
That background went a long way toward preparing him for his directorial debut, Perry told Polygon.
“[As an action coordinator], the technical filmmaking part of that is infinitely more difficult and more intricate,” Perry says. “And also you have the burden that somebody could get killed on your set. So on top of having a finite amount of time, and the pressure of the danger and all of that, you have to be able to manage all of that and still come out on top. So it’s a pressure cooker.”
Perry comes from a long line of former stunt performers who have moved into the director’s chair, and
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