Night Patrol Review: Bloodsuckers of LAPD

These days, it’s really feeling like law enforcement is a bloodthirsty parasite on America’s communities. In ghetto horror Night Patrol, that suspicion is quite literal, as the titular Night Patrol LAPD special unit is actually a bunch of vampires.

That’s the story that Wazi (RJ Cyler) lays out when he’s arrested with a giant piece of metal hanging sticking out of his side, about how the Night Patrol invaded the Black community of Colonial Courts and butchered them all for their blood.

That sounds simple enough, but Night Patrol’s underlying problem is that it’s got half a dozen plot points too many for director Ryan Prows to handle. He’s undoubtedly adept at balancing spinning plates loaded with narratives, as proved by his feature debut, the suitably-titled action sleaze-fest of Lowlife. Yet Night Patrol never seems to quite leave its lens in any one direction for long enough to do anything except play “spot the reference.” Prows, who created the script with his Lowlife cowriters Shaye Ogbonna, Tim Cairo, and Jake Gibson, pulls heavily on the best of Nineties and early Aughts crime flicks, with undeniable references to everything from Trespass to Boyz N the Hood, The Usual Suspects, and most especially Dark Blue, James Ellroy’s barely-fictionalized recounting of the Rampart Scandal. Any of those inspirations would have been enough to support the film, but Prows et al use them all to greater or lesser results.

Most interesting of all is the Colors-meets-Training Day vibe of the central plot between cop partners Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler, Sorry to Bother You, Ricky Stanicky) and Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long, Barbarian, The Wave). Carr grew up in the projects and being Black on the force means he’s been rejected at home and in the locker room. Hawkins has his own troubled history, as the orphaned son of a legendary cop and a former Navy SEAL sniper who gets a little too defensive when Carr makes a joke about war crimes. Take all the other elements – the overblown style, the weird diversions, and the whole supernatural element – and theirs remains the most intriguing and well-crafted component. Neither of them has any illusions about the LAPD, and especially about the non-vampiric horrors inflicted by Night Patrol on the community, and the fact that their friendship is tempered by the racial dynamics of the situation. It’s an especially moving performance for Long, who excels at morally conflicted characters and gets to add a coldblooded twist to Hawkins’ dilemmas.

Carr and Hawkins are also given a great foil in the muscled and mean form of Phil Brooks as the walking, talking embodiment of callous police violence. When not wrestling for the WWE as CM Punk, he’s been earning a solid reputation in indie horror titles like Girl on the Third Floor and Jakob’s Wife, and Night Patrol gives him his most extensive role to date. The way he spits “you people” at the innocent citizens he has caged sums up the merciless and gleeful white supremacist violence of the Night Patrol. Notably, Brooks is given stronger dialogue than most of the defenders of Colonial Courts, and the handful of scenes with him, Fowler, and Long hint at a weightier, more incisive drama. It’s all supposed to be balanced out by the revelation that Wazi’s mother, Ayana (Nicki Micheaux, Summer of Violence), is using Zulu magic to conquer the vampires, but the questions that subplot raises about retaining cultural heritage in a colonial world are simply sublimated into a 40-minute closing siege act with magic spears and glowing rings. Dark Blue becomes Demon Knight, and that’s a disappointing pivot.

It’s clear that Prows enjoys these big, multilayered stories with a social message, but it’s also clear that Night Patrol would have benefitted from being more streamlined. Reveals are mistimed or flatly delivered, characters disappear for endless scenes (even Wazi goes AWOL in his own story for half the runtime). But most of all Prows lets all those subplots divert him from saying something meaningful about how even the best-intentioned of cops end up part of a nightmare machine. Luckily, the plentiful and creative gore splatters enough blood and ichor to provide camouflage disguising those shortcomings. Or rather, enough to make Night Patrol entertaining – just not enough to completely obfuscate what it could have been.

Night Patrol

2025, R, 104 mins. Directed by Ryan Prows. Starring Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, RJ Cyler, Freddie Gibbs, Keenon Dequan “YG” Ray Jackson, Nicki Micheaux, Flying Lotus, Phil Brooks, Dermot Mulroney, Jon Oswald.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

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