J.J. Perry, the director of Netflix’s new action comedy Day Shift, suggested four of his favorite movies that combine action, horror, and comedy that you can watch at home.
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Netflix’s new vampire hunting movie Day Shift brings back an old classic: combining action, horror, and comedy into a fun, audience-thrilling package. It helps to have a leading man like Jamie Foxx, and a director like J.J. Perry.
First-time director Perry, a veteran stunt performer and action choreographer, brings electric action sequences to the movie, while Foxx and co-star Dave Franco layer on the charm. Perry talked to Polygon about his love for movies that can combine the three genres of action, horror, and comedy.
“When you have those three ingredients and implement them perfectly,” he says, “you’ll always have the upper hand on the audience.”
Perry’s work on the John Wick franchise and his longtime friendship and work partnership with director Chad Stahelski meant he started receiving a lot of scripts for his first directing project. But most of those scripts were laser-focused on traumatic experiences in the military. Perry, an Army veteran, wasn’t interested in doing that kind of work.
“People were sending me scripts and they were all darker,” he says. “And because I was in the Army, [they were all], Oh, this is about a PTSD guy, with a sniper that has PTSD and Oh we want you to do a John Wick kind of movie, and I was like, Well, I kind of did that.
