This article was originally published as part of our 2025 Fantastic Fest dispatch coverage.
Every once in a while, I’m reminded how fun it is to walk into a movie knowing absolutely nothing about it. Specifically, I walked into my first 2025 Fantastic Fest screening, the World Premiere of Night Patrol, knowing exactly one thing: that it was directed by the hugely talented Ryan Prows, whose 2017 debut feature, Lowlife, was one of my favorite films of that year. That’s all I needed to know. I didn’t read the plot synopsis or the cast list or what genre(s) it fell into. Going in blind to any movie is a rarity, especially for critics, but I now realize that it can be an absolute gift to have no expectations.
Because it’s a Prows joint, Night Patrol starts out with a tender moment (or an attempt at one) followed immediately by a brutal murder. Fledgling Crip gang member Wazi (RJ Cyler) meets his girlfriend in a secluded spot. She happens to be the sister of a high-level Blood gang leader, so I’m immediately thinking this is going to be some Romeo & Juliet for the modern world. But not only does she reject a ring he offers her, she also decides him taking things too seriously is grounds for ending their secret affair. But before he can fully express his disappointment, the police pull up on them and, in what appears to be an initiation for a cop named Hawkins (Justin Long), he straight-up murders the girl while Wazi gets away (or is perhaps allowed to escape).
A great deal of the story (co-written by Prows, Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, and Shaye Ogbonna) is about family connections, legacy, and being beholden to the past, whether one wants to be or not. It turns out that Hawkins is the son of a late cop (Dermot Mulroney) who was a founding member of a police task force called Night Patrol, so he seems especially eager to show he’s as much a man as his dad. But standing next to some of the massive humans that make up the task force, it’s an uphill battle for Hawkins—although killing a random, gang-banger-adjacent woman seems to be the final step in him proving himself. Night Patrol seems to focus on gang-related crime, but their not-so-secret secret is that they are an all-white group and they have no issues killing random Black folks and making it look gang-related.
In a beautiful coincidence, Hawkins' partner (before he’s pulled into Night Patrol) is a former gang member named Carr (Jermaine Fowler), whose brother just happens to be Wazi. The brothers don’t talk much, but when Wazi attempts to tell his brother about cops shooting his girlfriend, word gets back to the task force, making Wazi their next target. The Carr brothers’ mother (the great Nicki Micheaux, who gave a standout performance in Lowlife as well) is seemingly a brutal conspiracy theorist who has ideas about those in power being lizards, demons, and other evil, non-human creatures. Most people in the neighborhood think it's funny and pathetic, but she may be onto something. She raised her children to believe these things as well, but they resisted, which doesn’t mean they don’t remember their training.
The trailer and poster for Night Patrol gives away a bit of a surprise twist that occurs fairly deep into the movie, which, again, I wasn’t expecting because I hadn’t seen either before screening the film (thank god), so I was stunned when this urban drama about white cops versus pretty much every Black citizen they lay their eyes on turns into something wholly different and totally supernatural. In order to fight a completely unexpected new form of evil, Wazi and his mother actually broker a cease-fire deal with the Bloods to work together with the Crips to fight the Night Patrol. The heroes and villains in the story switch as the battle lines are drawn and redrawn as certain truths come out. If the film has anything going against it, it’s that it’s Sinners-adjacent in certain ways, especially because you think it’s going to be about one thing and it introduces a whole new genre halfway in. But a big reason I admire this movie so much is that unexpected shift, which forces audiences to adjust their brain somewhat and expect a whole different style of bloodletting.
It’s also impressive how the Black characters have to rely on their African heritage to fight this new evil, in the same way they are prepared to use their modern-day skill sets to fight the day-to-day evil they’re more familiar with. This movie is wild, both for its in-your-face social commentary and for its head-first, savage dive into horror. The performances, especially from Cyler, Micheaux, and Long, are stellar, primarily because they are so fully committed to making this outrageous premise feel grounded and incredibly relevant. I can’t wait for people to see this and start talking about every aspect of its inventive yet troublingly familiar tale.
The film opens in theaters Friday.
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