⭐⭐☆☆☆
Night Patrol is one of those movies that sounds awesome on paper — cop thriller meets vampires in a gritty Los Angeles setting — but ends up feeling frustratingly half-baked, messy and boring once you actually watch it.
At its core, Night Patrol has an intriguing premise: LAPD officer Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler) finds himself caught between his duty as a cop and the truth about an elite task force known as the Night Patrol — a group of officers who are secretly vampires feeding on marginalized residents while framing the carnage as gang violence. The setup has bite (pun intended), which almost makes the movie worth the watch… almost.
Director Ryan Prows gives the film some stylistic flourishes, and there are definitely moments where the tone, visuals, and worldbuilding hint at something more than your average January horror release. There are flashes of tension and atmosphere, and certain scenes feel bold and creatively staged. But overall, the direction feels scattershot and unfocused, which keeps the film from ever fully taking flight. The pacing is uneven, and the editing makes the story feel stretched and disjointed rather than suspenseful or compelling.
Performances are… mixed. Jermaine Fowler and the cast — including Justin Long, RJ Cyler, Freddie Gibbs, and even CM Punk — clearly commit to their roles, and some actors bring genuine energy to the material. But the characters themselves are underdeveloped, the dialogue rarely feels natural, and the emotional stakes never fully land. Even when the movie tries to tap into real-world themes like systemic violence and street politics, it undercuts itself with incoherent narrative choices and tonal mismatches.
Storywise, Night Patrol has a lot of ideas — vampire cops, gang alliances, ancestral mysticism, conflicted loyalties — but juggles them so clumsily that none of them get the depth or focus they deserve. The horror elements are often held off too long, and when the supernatural aspects finally show up, they feel like an afterthought rather than integrated parts of the world. Many scenes feel like loose threads rather than building towards something cohesive.
Final Rating: ⭐⭐☆☆☆
Night Patrol almost works — and you can see the ambition behind it — but uneven direction, an unfocused story, and unfulfilled potential make this a disappointing experience. The pieces of a great cult horror film are here, but too many of them are left scattered rather than brought together. Not terrible, but far from the bold genre mash-up it could have been.
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