Night Patrol – review

Director: Ryan Prows

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Gangs, cops, vampires… presented in a gritty thriller style… on the surface this should wow and, at first, it certainly holds the viewer attention and yet it loses itself, cutting from realism (albeit a realism with vampires) to silliness without breaking stride. This really should be better than it is, and that’s a crying shame.

Wazi injured

It starts in an interrogation room and Wazi (RJ Cyler) is injured with a stone spearhead (for want of a better description) stuck out of his side. A cop, Captain Freeman (Nick Gillie), enters the room and has him sign a statement (presumably that he has not dictated), signing a second copy when Wazi gets his blood on the first. Cutting backwards and we see Wazi on his bike. He goes to a car and meets Primo (Zuri Reed). Theirs is an illicit romance, him being a member of the Crips and her a member of the Bloods.

Zulu ring

He has clearly read too much in as he has brought her a ring (quickly suggesting it as a gift not a proposal). The ring actually belongs to his mother (Nicki Micheaux) and is of Zulu origin. Suddenly there is a car there and members of the Night Patrol – an elite gangbusting police task force – are there. Among them is Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long, House of Darkness). He is expected to execute Primo and does. Wazi runs and chase is given but as one of the Night Patrol finds him and is about to approach, he notices the ring and backs off. Hawkins has Wazi’s bike and it has his gang tag painted on it.

Carr and Hawkins

Hawkins is giving a talk to a bunch of highschoolers. A man bursts into the gym, his face covered and fires off a machine gun. Hawkins falls, the man terrorises a student when Hawkins sits up and congratulates his partner Carr (Jermaine Fowler) – the machine gun firing blanks. Outside, however, he remonstrates with him, it wasn’t part of the script. Carr was brought up within the Crips community and Hawkins asks about the tag on the bike – Carr does recognise it, as Wazi is his brother, but suggests he would ask his brother whose tag it is. Later Carr discovers that Hawkins has made Night Patrol and this is the last day rolling together.

Freddie Gibbs as Bornelius

Wazi takes himself to Bloods territory to tell their leader, Bornelius (Freddie Gibbs), that his sister Primo has been killed. The Bloods make him take them to the scene, where her body has been torn apart. The Bloods have a debate as to whether this was the work of demons or lizard people (a taste of the off the rails moments to come). Meanwhile Hawkins is actually trying to infiltrate, rather than join, Night Patrol. His father had been in the group and had vanished. He does go out of his way to protect Wazi for Carr.

metal fangs

So, what is happening? Night Patrol are vampires and they are led by Hawkins' father who is bringing his son into the fold. They forcibly turn him and intend to wipe out the Crips (and all those living in the Housing Project they run). The film, as mentioned, has been gritty thriller (bar the conspiracy spouting Bloods) and this feels like it is continuing when the vampires put in metal fangs. However, we then discover they are ultra powerful – headshots heal for instance. But then a stake through the heart heals too. It appears nothing can hurt them.

vampires, or...

There is a debate about what they are – with Wazi saying vampire – and mentions made of obayifo. According to Bane, obayifo are energy vampires from Ashanti folklore, in this repurposed to Zulu folklore but Ghana is a long way from South Africa. In the film they say (during this fairly long discussion, in the open, as the vampires devastate the Housing Project around them) that obayifo have pink skin, iron teeth and they attack the prey from trees above. They also name them Asanbosam, which according to Bane do hunt from trees though it is feet and hands that are iron and again is folklore from Ghana (and the Ivory Coast). What the film does, more than anything, is draw a line between the white cops and black gang members – at one point suggesting “One thing the colonizers all fear? Our Blackness.”

Zulu artefacts

This might be on the nose but is fine as a central premise (even if the exposition was ill-placed as the three in the discussion should have been up to their knees in vampires). However, where it goes wrong (and MASSIVE SPOILER) is in making the only thing that can kill them being Zulu artefacts but, worse, having the artifacts (ring and the spearhead that Wazi had embedded in his side at the opening of the film) glow green. Honestly, the ring looked like we’d just flipped into a Green Lantern film. We then get Hawkins flying and his jaw splitting and fanged like a Reaper Strain vampire – the realism they toyed with out of the window by this point.

reaper strain

And it is a shame. Even though the central messaging was on the nose, this worked. The gritty realism and the low key on supernatural tropes worked (having metal fangs was a nice touch). But then the mismatched power, the artefacts, the sudden ability to fly… it undermined everything the film had successfully built. Because I liked the film until the ride started getting silly I’m going to settle for 5 out of 10 – if they had maintained the tone and eschewed the superhero-like aspects it would have been higher.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Honourable Mention: Poison City (London Tau volume 1)

This volume by Paul Crilley is the first of the London Tau series and I received this as part of the Amazon Vine programme. The article, therefore, is an extension of the review I posted on Amazon in the first instance.

The book carries blurb that connects it to Harry Potter – an obvious advertisers’ choice given the involvement of magic – and also the works of Ben Aaronovitch. The latter is obvious as it involves a supernatural division of the police but based in Durban, South Africa rather than London, England.

However Crilley has created a radically different character to Peter Grant. If Grant is innocence facing the unknown then Crilley’s character, Gideon (or London) Tau, is the face that has peered into the abyss for way too long and has come away jaded and, ultimately corrupt. Perhaps likening this to the Godfather of Urban Fantasy, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, would have been more accurate. In Tau Crilley has created a flawed anti-hero and that is part of the draw of the volume.

The writing is crisp and urgent, with some great ideas thrown into the mix. We are treated to a world where fae and orisha lurk just out of view of the ordinary person, where vampires stalk the night and werehyena guard townships. His spirit guide is a talking, alcoholic drunk (and a mean one at that) dog and there is an interesting take on Judaeo-Christian mythology also.

So, the vampires. These come into the book early on as the first murder that Tau is investigating is a ramanga – a low level vampire that consumes any blood spilt by a tribal leader, if they accidentally cut themselves, any waste items such as nail clippings, to prevent enemies being able to get their hands on it and use it in magic. This ramanga also, it later transpires, happened to be a sin eater.

We also get to meet, in small sections, mpakafo, aigamucha, Nosferatu and asanbosam. There is also an angel, at one point, sniffing a child’s soul as a drug and the vampires are being controlled by Lilith. However the vampiric element is quite a small part of the novel – hence the honourable mention – and the main focus are Lilith and the sin eaters. Whilst the sin eaters do consume sin (including the memory of the sin), it is not a vampiric activity in itself. The sin eater holds that sin and memory and passes it on to another sin eater before they die (or it returns to the sinner).

And that, as they say, is that. As the opener for an urban fantasy series I would recommend the volume.