Night Patrol Is a Cool Idea Stuck in a Confusing Movie

I really wanted to be in the tank for Night Patrol. This is clearly trying to be Sinners adjacent, but the writing and direction are so dreadful that most of the cast cannot bring the story to life. On paper it sounds solid. You have vampire cops. Corruption as literal bloodsucking. Rival gangs uniting with African mysticism to fight back. That sounds like the kind of midnight horror movie that should have people arguing about it for years. Instead, it mostly left me tired.

Directed by Ryan Prows and released by RLJE Films, Night Patrol stars Jermaine Fowler as Xavier Carr, an LAPD officer trying to climb the ranks while distancing himself from his old life. Justin Long plays Ethan Hawkins, the legacy cop eager to join the elite Night Patrol unit. RJ Cyler plays Wazi, Xavier’s brother, who stumbles onto the secret that the task force is actually a crew of badge-wearing vampires led by Sarge, played by Dermot Mulroney.

That premise is strong. It has teeth. It is swinging at something real. Police as a self-protecting class. Marginalized communities treated like occupied territory. You can feel the movie trying to be in the lineage of George Romero or John Carpenter, horror as political scalpel.

The problem is the script feels like it was written by three different people in three different moods, then edited in a dark room with a dull pair of scissors.

The setup works for the first act. You have Xavier’s divided loyalties, Wazi witnessing a brutal murder, and Ethan wanting to live up to his father’s legacy. There is tension there and tragedy there. The movie hints at something sharp and focused.

Then it starts piling on ideas without finishing any of them. You have gang politics. You have vampire lore. You have Zulu mysticism through Ayanda, played by Nicki Micheaux. You have lizardmen conspiracy talk. You have commentary on police unions and internal loyalty. You have generational trauma. You have a big third act siege. None of these are bad on their own. Together, they start to feel like a group project where nobody agreed on the thesis.

There is a scene where the conspiracy gangbangers are debating lizardmen. And weirdly, that might be the most authentic moment in the film. It genuinely sounds like a conversation you would overhear at a barbershop at 6 pm on a Friday. It has rhythm. It has personality. It has that “wait, are you serious right now?” energy that real people have. For a second, the movie relaxes and becomes something human.

I wish it trusted that energy more. Instead, it keeps lunging toward importance. Every other scene feels like it is announcing a Theme. Xavier’s identity crisis is sketched but not deeply explored. Wazi carries a lot of emotional weight, and RJ Cyler honestly does the most with what he is given. He feels like he is in a different, better movie half the time. Justin Long swings big and sometimes lands it, sometimes not. Jermaine Fowler is stuck in the middle, and Xavier ends up feeling more like a plot device than a person.

The editing is rough. Characters have conversations in the third act that feel like they should have happened an hour earlier. Jokes undercut tension in ways that do not feel intentional. There is a late reveal that is clearly meant to land as darkly funny, but it barely registers because the movie already stepped on its own punchline.

And the tone. That is the real killer. It never fully commits to what it is. If it leaned into exploitation horror and went wild, I could forgive the chaos. If it tightened the script and focused on one main character, I could forgive the ambition. Instead, it hovers in this middle zone where it wants to be serious and pulpy and mythic and grounded all at once.

The final siege in the projects should be cathartic. Crips and Bloods united. Heavy weaponry. Ancient mysticism versus vampiric cops. That is a concept that should feel unhinged in the best way. It is staged competently. Prows knows how to frame a scene. The lighting and the synth-heavy score are doing work. But emotionally, it feels weirdly flat. We have not spent enough clean, focused time with these characters to feel the payoff. The movie ends on a cliffhanger about a deeper conspiracy inside the LAPD. Instead of intrigue, I mostly felt relief.

There is something in here. You can see it. The idea of police as literal bloodsuckers who feed on the marginalized is not subtle, but horror does not have to be subtle. The problem is execution. Confusing structure. Underdeveloped arcs. Too many threads fighting for oxygen.

I can absolutely see this finding a cult following. The concept alone guarantees late-night Reddit threads. There are performances worth talking about. There are images that stick. But as a whole, Night Patrol feels like a draft that needed one more brutal rewrite.

It is not boring. That might be the nicest thing I can say. It is just frustrating. The kind of movie where you keep thinking about what it could have been instead of what it is.