Filmmakers — and certainly studios — may not like to hear this but bad movies have value in the way they can make great movies even better. Take Night Patrol, the latest release from Shudder. It’s a political horror film that coincidentally possesses overlapping themes with two of last year’s best films: Sinners and One Battle After Another. But the way that it so badly mangles a story, one which also contains vampires and ex-revolutionaries forced back into action due to loved ones in peril, makes one appreciate the sterling pair of 2025 Warners releases even more. I’m not sure if revealing that the titular task force is comprised of vampires is even a spoiler. The trailer hinges on it, the poster has fangs on it but in the film itself, director and co-writer Ryan Prows treats it like a mind-blowing third act revelation.
Further establishing himself as a horror mainstay, Justin Long stars as Ethan, an LAPD cop putting his new partner Xavier (Jermaine Fowler) through his paces out on their patrol routes. While he pursued law enforcement as a career path to transcend his gang-affiliated past, Xavier’s mom Ayanda (Nicki Micheaux) and younger brother Wazi (RJ Cyler) have reasons to distrust the police. The latter was just witness to a murder committed by an officer trying to gain his way into Night Patrol, a secret squad within the department that carries out off-the-books operations under cover of darkness. But what Ethan doesn’t know is that there’s more than one reason Night Patrol hunts at night: its members, led by Sarge (Dermot Mulroney), are part of a vampiric order that has literally been draining blood from the community.
Along with his three co-scribes, Prows attempts to reframe the decades-long gang wars in Los Angeles not between rival human factions like the Bloods and Crips, but between vampires and those who practice Zulu sorcery. Even attempting this type of narrative within a horror framework requires a deft hand, given that it’s tackling tricky themes like systemic racism and police brutality while also developing its own supernatural lore. Not only does Prows not give the political material the nuance and sensitivity it deserves, he doesn’t lay out the monsters vs. magic groundwork until well into the film’s third act, when we should already have a clear understanding what’s happening. Strangely, he plays coy with who Night Patrol is and what they’re looking to accomplish for far too much of the narrative, which makes for a muddled story as opposed to lending it an air of mystery.
Had Night Patrol announced its genre intentions from the get-go, perhaps it could’ve been enjoyable at least as a campy horror mashup that invokes the real-life horrors of gang violence in LA. But Prows plays things deadly serious, presenting his project as a gritty cop thriller with unclear stakes and ambiguous character motivation for most of the runtime. There are numerous scenes — a particularly egregious one shot in monochromatic infrared and set to heavy metal music — that depict Black characters we’ve never met getting terrorized and/or murdered by Night Patrol for seemingly no reason. Given their correlation to tragedies we’ve seen play out in the real world time and time again, these upsetting images require some serious justification for their inclusion in the movie but instead, they just feel exploitative and wrong.
It’s a shame that Night Patrol is so dreary and distasteful because there are some fun casting choices that could’ve led to moments that really click with audiences. Rapper Freddie Gibbs, who has only popped up in a few TV series before this, is a commanding screen presence as a gang leader pressing Wazi on the details of the killing he saw firsthand. Multi-hyphenate Flying Lotus, who directed and scored the cosmic horror film Ash last year, has all-too-brief time on-screen as a Zulu member who takes a beat to school his compatriots on monster mythology. They deserve better material that doesn’t crib from regressive stereotypes in an attempt to address the harsh realities of lethal street violence. Night Patrol needs to be called into its police chief’s office to have its badge and gun taken away before being forced into a leave of absence.
Score – 1/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Mercy, a sci-fi mystery starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, finds an LA detective on trial for the murder of his wife, with 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an advanced AI judge.
Also coming to theaters is In Cold Light, a crime thriller starring Maika Monroe and Troy Kotsur, follows a young woman who’s trying to lay low after her recent prison stint but is forced on the run after she witnesses her twin brother’s murder and is framed for it.
Streaming on HBO Max is Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!, a 2-part documentary covering the life, career, friendships, and loves of legendary writer, director, producer, and performer Mel Brooks, chronicling his early experiences and rise to superstardom.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup