Night Patrol

The Blood on the Badge

If the vampire myth is fundamentally about consumption—the powerful draining the life from the powerless to sustain their own immortality—then Ryan Prows’ *Night Patrol* is less a reinvention of the wheel and more a jagged realignment of its axle. Prows, who previously demonstrated a talent for chaotic, multi-stranded storytelling in the cult hit *Lowlife*, here turns his lens toward the sun-bleached, neon-streaked streets of Los Angeles. The result is a film that functions as both a grindhouse creature feature and a searing indictment of institutional rot, suggesting that the most terrifying monsters aren’t the ones hiding under the bed, but the ones patrolling your block.



The narrative framework of *Night Patrol* initially masquerades as a standard procedural. We are introduced to Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler), an ambitious LAPD officer caught in the friction between his badge and his roots in the neighborhood he patrols. His partner, Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long), is the film’s Trojan horse—a legacy hire desperate to join the elite, shadowy task force known as the "Night Patrol." Prows utilizes the visual language of David Ayer’s cop dramas—handheld cameras, tactical lighting, the claustrophobia of the cruiser—to ground us in a gritty reality before pulling the rug out. When the reveal comes, it is not treated as a gothic romance but as a systemic inevitability: the elite unit is not just corrupt; they are literal bloodsuckers, an all-white death squad engaging in predation disguised as policing.

Visually, the film is a study in toxicity. The cinematography bathes Los Angeles in a sickly, sodium-vapor yellow and harsh LED blues, creating an atmosphere that feels simultaneously over-exposed and shadowy. Prows resists the urge to make the vampires elegant. There are no velvet capes here. The "Night Patrol" officers, including a menacing turn by Phil "CM Punk" Brooks, are hulking, tactical brutes. Their vampirism is industrial, a tool of the trade like a baton or a sidearm. This aesthetic choice is crucial; it strips the supernatural of its allure, leaving only the violence. The horror elements—practical gore that feels tactile and wet—serve to emphasize the brutality of the state rather than provide escapist thrills.



However, the film’s true pulse beats in the performance of RJ Cyler as Wazi, Xavier’s brother. While the script occasionally labors under the weight of its own metaphors—the symbolism of "bleeding the community dry" is text, not subtext—Cyler grounds the narrative in human desperation. The dynamic between the brothers, one trying to change the system from within and the other targeted by it, provides the emotional stakes that the horror set-pieces require. Prows is careful not to let the genre mechanics overwhelm the tragedy; when characters die in *Night Patrol*, their absence leaves a void. The film argues that in a system built on predation, survival is not just about dodging bullets, but about refusing to be consumed.



Ultimately, *Night Patrol* is a furious, imperfect howl of a movie. It lacks the surgical precision of Jordan Peele’s social thrillers, opting instead for the blunt force of a riot shield. There are moments where the tone wobbles, struggling to balance the schlocky fun of exploding heads with the gravity of its themes. Yet, in an era of sanitized franchise horror, there is something undeniable about Prows’ ambition. He has crafted a monster movie where the horror is not that the vampires are real, but that their methods are so disturbingly familiar. *Night Patrol* does not just ask us to fear the dark; it asks us to question who we’ve authorized to rule it.