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

Obayifo Project – review

Director: Paco Arasanz

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

The obayifo is an African vampire type and as Bane describes it: “The Ashanti people of the Gold Coast of Africa have in their vampiric lore a witch who uses his powers to drain the life and energy from children and crops.” So, very much an energy vampire – this is changed in the film – the Bane entry also suggests that they are born with a disposition to be obayifo, so a person cannot simply be turned, and is obsessed with food.

This is an interesting premise and one that is mishandled by giving in to the worst excesses of the found footage genre.

crew selfie

Intertitles tell us this is footage from police files and then, after an opening of indistinct POV footage overdubbed with the start of a police interview with Julio (Sergio María), dating the film to 2023, the film cuts to Julio and his new camper van. He is with girlfriend Carol (María Monroy) and meeting up with cameraman Carlos (Luciano Ciaglia) – who sometimes is called Charlie in film – and they are going to make a movie entitled, Julio tells them, Obayifo 2.

getting on the road

When asked why it is number 2, he explains that in 2003 a group of Ghanaian filmmakers looked to make the African Blair Witch Project and had a shaman invoke an obayifo into the body of a homeless man. So, we have vampiric possession and also a veer from the folklore as relayed by Bane. The footage is online and he shows them (we don’t see it, only Carol’s reaction). The homeless man died, came back to life and attacked the filmmakers slaughtering everyone. He has no memory of the events, apparently.

Siberou Saar as Dr Deke

They drive to Fort Bravo – a wild west styled theme park in Almeria, Spain, where he is meeting Samuel (Lord Berko) who has arranged a meeting for them with Dr Deke (Siberou Saar), a shaman. He gives them a note that will get them past his guardians and says that Deke has agreed to do the ritual for €1000. We get some footage explaining the obayifo – it was unclear but I assume it was meant to be from the earlier film. They then go to meet Deke who, as Carlos had mentioned en route, is Senegalese, so when he is shown the ritual footage he points out that he is from Senegal not Ghana and makes a comment about it all being the same to them. This was an interesting racial prejudice angle that, whilst touched on a couple of times in a comment about not respecting the ritual and a racial slur, was not capitalised upon at all.

the ritual

Deke agrees to do the ritual the next night and reluctantly finds a receptor (Favour David Iyawe) for the spirit. When they start the ritual the receptor can’t help but laugh and so Julio gives him a sedative – later revealed to be MDPV, named in film as a cannibal drug, and a stimulant. The receptor, who is fitted with a chest camera, goes into convulsions and dies. This causes the filmmakers to freak; they take the body to the van with the aim of getting him to hospital, this quickly devolves to Julio deciding to bury him and pulling a gun on the others to force compliance. The film ignores that they knew the original possessed man in Ghana died and then returned and they drive off having left the camera on him! On return, to retrieve said camera, he is up and at ‘em already and they are able to turn its light on and see footage live (as they try and find him).

camera glitch

I mentioned the worst excesses of the found footage genre and we get shaky cameras, annoying noises (like wind) on the footage and indistinct footage due to lack of lighting. It hides the joins, of course, but makes it a pain to watch. The characters are not really interesting enough to hold attention and then the bickering once it goes wrong just loops through overly similar dialogue. The film could be read as a psychotic break caused by the drug and being buried in a shallow grave – after all the obayifo seems to be murdering not feeding. However there is a camera glitch that shows the obayifo overlayed on the receptor before the ritual. The intrusion of the obayifo at the police station, when the incident takes place in the middle of nowhere so is presumably miles away, and shots fired to no effect also suggests a supernatural element.

attack

A mid-credit sequence gives us an influencer (Marila Lombrozo), who has the footage, looking to do a Twitch version of the ritual is placed in order to announce a sequel Obayifo Project: World Domination. My advice is that the racial aspect was really interesting, do more of that, but drop the found footage style and film it properly. That style drops this one to 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon UK