NIGHT PATROL (2025)
Last year, SINNERS took the world by storm. Ryan Coogler’s unapologetically Black vampire horror film was a swing that paid off in both critical acclaim and box office revenue. It should be expected that copycats will follow as Hollywood will undoubtedly attempt to ape so much of what Sinners got right, while inevitably getting so much of it wrong. It’s a tale as old as Hollywood itself: film X does wonders and Hollywood tries to replicate it to varying degrees of success. Ryan Prows’ NIGHT PATROL (2025) might seem like an early SINNERS copycat, but understand two things: Firstly, Sinners is not the first black horror film to use the vampire as metaphor (nor will it be the last), and secondly, NIGHT PATROL is not one of those inevitable copycats. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it's good either.
Shot in October of 2024, NIGHT PATROL completed principal photography well before the debut of SINNERS in April 2025. Thematically it has more in line with director Prows’ V/H/S/94 segment, “Terror,” which follows a group of bumbling white supremacists terrorized by their vampire prisoner. So one would think that NIGHT PATROL also has a similar meat-and-potatoes-like premise for its bloodsuckers. The film follows an L.A. cop on the rise (played by Jermaine Fowler) who discovers that a local police task force is secretly a coven of vampires that threatens to lay siege to the housing projects he grew up in. Simple, right? In regards to the premise, yes. In execution, far less so.
The simple set up of the film is made needlessly complicated due to the lack of a clear vision on who the lead of this story is, or even what it wishes to say with the three potential protagonists. First, there is Fowler’s cop, who is trying to escape a life in the projects using the veneer of order as provided by the State. Then there is his younger brother (played by RJ Cyler), who has remained in the projects with his mother (Nicki Micheaux) and is witness to the film’s tragic opening moments that sets the titular night patrol up with laying siege to the projects. And finally, there is Justin Long’s more seasoned cop, who is partnered up with Fowler and is looking to infiltrate the night patrol to discover what happened to his late father, himself also a cop.
Each character has a compelling link to the police, the projects, and the night patrol in question, yet all are drastically underserved in giving a proper resolution to their character’s plights. If one was to go off the premise, it would suggest that Fowler is in fact the lead. If nothing else, his character’s dilemma presents an engaging hook. Can he synthesize his two different lives - and by extension, offer the audience a form of catharsis where the State and the Street come to unify peacefully? The film’s answer to that is hard to say, given Fowler's lack of impact on the overall narrative and removal from the plot more than half-way through the film. Quite simply, Fowler is given little to do or engage with on a fundamental level.
By contrast, RJ Cyler’s character goes on his own journey of personal and cultural growth to combat the vampiric menace and has the most traditionally developed character arc. Yet that “arc” is shaky at best when Cyler’s character presents no real weight or pushback to the drama hoisted upon him. Unlike Fowler’s cop, who has an interesting dramatic push-and-pull between his conflicting wants and desires, Cyler has none between his plan to unite the Crips and the Bloods or even his struggle to embrace his cultural roots. He is simply subservient to whatever other characters need of him in any given moment.
And finally, there is Justin Long’s polarizing character. If there is a moment to ever so slightly spoil the film, then let it be this one: it will not be Fowler’s cop who discovers the vampire threat, but rather Justin Long’s. Long presents as the one character who is most inextricably tied to the night patrol due to his search for answers in relation to his dead father. But his involvement with the film’s violent inciting incident (and his further lack of introspection or reckoning with his actions) colors the audience’s perception of the character long before he details his personal mission. His evolution throughout the film is further obfuscated by a lack of clarity of his motivations and whether he is in control of his actions - if he’s even aware of his actions at all. And so, because he never comes across as remorseful for his role in kickstarting the events of the film, his tumultuous plight in the second half feels haphazard at best, and unearned at most. In short, the three main men at the center of this story are in many ways underserved, underbaked, and never fully reconciled with, throughout the 104-minute runtime.
The premise of the film is undoubtedly exciting. It promises to be “TRAINING DAY-Meets-ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, but with vampires.” NIGHT PATROL starts with race-swaps of the archetypal pairing that defined the Antoine Fuqua film (subbing in Justin Long for Denzel Washington and Jermaine Fowler for Ethan Hawke), as well as swapping the siege on a police precinct for one of the projects where the police are now the enemy and the allied gangs are the heroes. Unfortunately, it lacks the magnetic charisma of a Denzel Washington keeping viewers invested like they were with the 2001 film or the airtight genre trappings that defined Carpenter’s film. Even the siege that NIGHT PATROL builds to, feels underdeveloped. Whereas in Carpenter’s film, the siege on Precinct 13 is fundamental to the development and growth of Ethan Bishop and prisoner Napoleon Wilson’s budding respect for one another, in Prows’ film the erratic and poor characterization means that the final act runs out of steam before it ever really gets going. No arcs have a clean or meaningful conclusion, and any larger thematic points the film has to make about the Police State, Black-on-Black violence, or even cops being literal bloodsuckers are left unsaid.
However, the film isn’t all bad. The notion of the night patrol is an interesting, yet under-explored, element. It contains wrestling favorite CM Punk, who makes for an inspired henchman heavy cop, as does the imposing Mike Fergusson. The task force’s implementation of fake vampire teeth they put on before a hunt, rather than having in-grown fangs, is an inspired piece of world-building decision that separates them from traditional on-screen bloodsuckers. And the way in which the vampire’s vision is showcased is imaginatively designed, as cinematographer Benjamin Kitchens (who also shot the “Terror” short in V/H/S/94) shoots these scenes in black and white thermal imaging. These crumbs of world-building and glimpses of a more unique film where tone and character are truly weird and funny are some of its best moments. There are genuinely funny moments when rivals-turned-allies argue about which traditions from different cultures are best at repelling vampires. There is also a touching, if somewhat underdeveloped, plotline that explores how the embracing of one’s cultural traditions can be used to defeat the vampire threat. These are moments of weirdness that I wish the film had embraced more of, that offer a rare take on vampirism arguably not seen since GANJA & HESS, a film that positions vampirism as a form of ancient and forgotten African cultural heritage.
I don’t like ragging on a film. I have no illusions about the difficulty that comes in making a feature. The negotiations, the budget, the scheduling, the will to maintain a singular creative vision, all of it. But NIGHT PATROL has major issues—from its characters to a general lag in pacing that makes the 104-minute runtime feel 30 minutes longer to a lack of a satisfying resolution to the narrative. Yet I hope Prows and co. get another shot at a feature, as the genuine creativity found within V/H/S/94’s “Terror” is enough to make me interested in what else he can do. As a short that gave a clear, concise, and unique vampire premise in the span of 20 minutes, perhaps NIGHT PATROL may have functioned better as an offshoot sequel to that instead: a simple story of a cop stuck between his loyalty to familial blood and blue blood, while caught in a carnage-ridden fight with vampires, in the span of a 15-20 minute segment. Prows is more than capable of working wonders with limited time and resources, so hopefully another run at the plate will yield more successful results at a feature length film. And if Prows can do that with such a limited time and budget, then surely he’s got more of that within him at a feature level.
For what it’s worth, the film has one kick-ass poster, I just wish the film were as interesting or exploitative as the poster suggests.
