Night Patrol (Shudder and RLJE Films)
.5 star (out of 4)
Director: Ryan Prows
Starring: Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, Freddie Gibbs, RJ Cyler, Keenon DeQuan “YG” Ray Jackson, Nicki Micheaux, and Flying Lotus, with Phil Brooks and Dermot Mulroney
Available: In theaters, January 16, 2026.
Here’s some good news for fans of gratuitous gore, graphic shootings, gaping wounds, and frequent utterances of the N-word, the F-word, the MF-word, and other expletives I hesitate to identify even using abbreviations: Night Patrol is threatening to come to a theater near you.
Unfortunately, those of us with a high school diploma and a vigorous belief that film can amuse, inspire, and tell a story will have to search elsewhere for our evening’s entertainment.
Let’s put it this way: My favorite part of Night Patrol was the closing credits.
Night Patrol is the sort of movie that makes one yearn for the good ol’ days when a new release was expected to bring cultural insight, commentary, and aesthetic quality to the screen, not simply gross us out for an interminable hour and 44 minutes with the gleeful splattering of vital fluids and ripped-out throats. If there aren’t already laws against this, Night Patrol might inspire them. And for that, we can be grateful.
Despite the flaws, Night Patrol has a promising start. Young gangbanger Wazi Carr (RJ Cyler, in a solid, consistent performance) meets his girlfriend in a darkened industrial zone in L.A. Wazi is a Crip. But uh-oh, the girlfriend is the sister of a leader of the arch-rival Bloods. Yes, echoes of the Montagues and Capulets begin to take shape. What follows, though, is anything but Shakespearean.
When an LAPD prowler pulls up behind them, lights flashing, we figure it’s just another roust. But no, it’s a test for the up-and-comer who wants to join the department’s tough-guy anti-gang unit, the Night Patrol. To clinch his membership, Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long) must shoot the girlfriend in the head, in cold blood. And he does -- without remorse.
His dead girlfriend crumpled on the ground behind him, Wazi escapes, finally making his way back to the projects, where he shares an apartment with his mother (an excellent Nicki Micheaux), who believes her practice of Zulu mysticism can protect her housing complex from the police; specifically, the Night Patrol.
The boys on that elite unit have a secret. And the secret is that they are…vampires. Look, folks, this is not a spoiler. Consider the film’s promotional tagline: Defang the police! Why this (not-so) secret isn’t stated plainly until halfway through the plot, who can say? Certainly not director Ryan Prows or his three other co-writers of the wayward script.
Wayward? For example: Who is the main character? Is it Wazi, the reluctant gang-banger, who must rally the people in the projects to battle the bloodthirsty cops? Is it his older brother Xavier (Jermaine Fowler), an honest cop investigating the Night Patrol? Is it Ethan Hawkins, who joins the Night Patrol by becoming a vampire, but is then overcome with self-loathing? (“I just ate a woman’s brains!” he wails at one point.) The audience doesn’t know. The writers don’t know. Clearly, the director doesn’t know.
The ultimate showdown is between the Night Patrol and the good people of the projects, many of whom are imprisoned behind a flimsy chain-link fence to donate their plasma to the vampire’s Tower of Blood. Can Zulu magic and hip-hop successfully battle a band of rogue vampire cops who are literally trying to suck the blood out of the Black community?
Oh, my lord. I’m desperately trying to avoid writing anything that leads you to believe that there is some Noble Theme here, some Sense of Purpose, some Underlying Metaphor. That would be cruel of me. A crime, in fact. None of that exists. There’s nothing noble (or cute or uplifting or spiritual or artistic) to see here, folks, so move along, please.
The reason that I’m so upset about this film is that it had the potential to be a solid, if derivative movie about cops and gangbangers. Instead, it turned into a smoking load of cinematic sewage.
Dermot Mulroney plays Sarge, the leader of the bloodsuckers. Mulroney is a competent actor (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Young Guns), but someone needs to offer him a job, quick, so he doesn’t have to pay the bills with movies like this in the near future. Or ever again.
But let’s not be completely negative. This steaming shipload of senselessness has some good points. The movie’s saving grace, for instance, is its relative brevity (one hour and 44 minutes), because one second longer and I would have jumped headfirst off the roof of my local brewery. On-set catering was by Evolution Caterers, which contributed the only example of good taste associated with this disaster, even though it didn’t make it onscreen. Two medics were overseeing the crew; if only they could be on hand in the theaters to hand out anti-nausea tablets, their jobs would be complete.
As for the set’s 15-man-strong security team, they might be better utilized at the various theater box offices to prevent refund riots. When I read that the crew’s salary was handled by ABS Payroll, I immediately shouted (out loud, I’m afraid,), “You mean, someone got paid for this?!”
Is Night Patrol sort of like Sinners meets Training Day? Only in your nightmares.
Author Bio:
Mark Orwoll writes about travel and film for Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine