At a Glance
- LAPD’s secret Night Patrol unit is revealed to be literal vampires feeding on a Black neighborhood.
- Officers Carr and Hawkins wrestle with racism, loyalty, and supernatural horror on the job.
- The film crams Colors, Training Day, Dark Blue, and Demon Knight into one blood-soaked story.
- Why it matters: It exposes how police violence can feel monstrous-then makes the monster real.
Director Ryan Prows floods the screen with gore and ideas, but the cluttered script keeps the social critique just out of reach.
Bloodsucking Badge
Wazi (RJ Cyler) spills the secret while handcuffed and bleeding: the LAPD’s Night Patrol is a vampire death squad that invaded Colonial Courts and bled his neighbors dry. That premise fuels Night Patrol, a 104-minute R-rated horror that never decides which story it wants to tell.
Prows-who turned underground crime into dark comedy with 2017’s Lowlife-teams again with writers Shaye Ogbonna, Tim Cairo, and Jake Gibson. Together they pile nods to Nineties and early-Aughts classics:
- Trespass
- Boyz n the Hood
- The Usual Suspects
- Dark Blue
Any one of those influences could carry a film; mashed together they compete for oxygen.
Partners on the Edge
The strongest thread follows officers Xavier Carr and Ethan Hawkins. Carr, a Black cop raised in the projects, faces rejection at home and inside the station. Hawkins, a legendary cop’s orphaned son and ex-SEAL sniper, bristles when Carr jokes about war crimes. Their uneasy bond grounds the chaos.
Jermaine Fowler gives Carr weary street smarts, while Justin Long leans into moral conflict with a cold twist. Their Colors-meets-Training Day dynamic offers the sharpest commentary on race and power inside the force.
Cruelty with a Badge
Former WWE star Phil Brooks (CM Punk) towers over the cast as a living embodiment of callous police violence. Sneering “you people” at caged citizens, he delivers the film’s most chilling lines. In his few shared scenes with Fowler and Long, the tension hints at a deeper, more incisive drama that the finished film never quite becomes.
Culture Clash
While the cops stalk alleys, Ayana (Nicki Micheaux) arms her son with Zulu magic-glowing rings and enchanted spears-to fight back. The subplot asks how colonized communities preserve heritage under siege, yet the answer dissolves into a 40-minute siege finale that swaps Dark Blue realism for Demon Knight spectacle.
Lost in the Blood
Characters vanish for reels:
- Wazi disappears for half the runtime
- Key reveals land mistimed or flat
- Narrative detours drown the core message
Prows clearly loves layered social horror, but Night Patrol needed pruning. The gore-creative and plentiful-provides momentary cover, splattering enough blood to keep viewers entertained, just not enough to hide what the film could have said about cops who become nightmares even when they mean well.
Cast and Credit
Night Patrol (2025) | R | 104 min.
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
News Of Austin review published January 16, 2026.
