Night Patrol is a film with a clear point of view and no shortage of ambition—but clarity of intent doesn’t always translate to depth of execution. The movie knows exactly what it wants to say about policing, racism, and power. The issue is that it doesn’t ultimately say anything we haven’t already heard, nor does it explore its most compelling ideas deeply enough to make them feel transformative.
At its core, Night Patrol is about corrupt policing. The vampire angle doesn’t fundamentally change that reality, it stylizes it. Instead of corrupt white cops patrolling Black neighborhoods at night, the film gives us corrupt white cops who happen to be vampires. Instead of police brutality, the violence becomes blood-drinking. The metaphor is obvious and easy to read, but it doesn’t evolve beyond that initial conceit.
The question the film never quite answers is: what does making them vampires actually add?
While the supernatural framing heightens the horror visually, it doesn’t deepen the commentary. The Night Patrol still functions as a unit of violent white officers who operate with impunity, target Black communities, and protect their own. Vampirism becomes a genre skin rather than a narrative tool that meaningfully complicates or expands the critique.
The film introduces its central family dynamic effectively. While Jermaine Fowler’s Xavier is positioned as the emotional center, the story is set in motion through his brother Wazi, played by RJ Cyler, whose early trauma anchors the stakes. The contrast between the brother who left the life and the one still shaped by it is one of the film’s stronger elements.
That said, Fowler doesn’t fully carry the film as a lead. Much of the emotional grounding comes from the supporting cast. Cyler brings urgency and believability, while Nicki Micheaux delivers a strong performance as Ayanda, the boys’ mother and the film’s primary link to African spirituality. However, her character, which is meant to represent ancestral knowledge and mysticism, feels underused. African spirituality is invoked, referenced, and aesthetically present, but rarely explored. The film gestures toward Zulu traditions without giving them enough narrative or cultural weight to function as anything more than symbolism.
This lack of depth becomes more noticeable because the film introduces multiple powerful themes without committing to any single one long enough to fully land:
- policing as predatory
- racism as systemic violence
- Black people as “disposable”
- blood as both literal and symbolic power
- spirituality as resistance
The most compelling of these ideas is the harvesting of Black people’s blood. This concept pushes beyond the familiar “disposable bodies” framing and hints at something richer: if Black people were truly disposable, why would they be the blood source? Why build an entire system around feeding off something deemed worthless? The implication is that the narrative of disposability is the lie: Black bodies are exploited precisely because they are powerful, valuable, and sustaining.
This is where Night Patrol briefly approaches something genuinely fresh—but it never fully commits. Instead of interrogating that tension, the film moves on, leaving the idea underdeveloped.
The Night Patrol itself suffers from the same issue. As an all-white unit meant to embody both racism and vampirism, they function more as a blunt symbol than a fully realized threat. Their presence reinforces what we already know about policing and racial power structures, but it doesn’t complicate or challenge those ideas in a new way. The result is a metaphor that’s legible but shallow.
By the end, Night Patrol isn’t a bad film, it’s an incomplete one. It’s built around an interesting concept with big ideas, but it struggles to land on any single theme with enough depth to feel fully realized. There’s a strong movie somewhere inside Night Patrol. It just never quite decides which version of itself it wants to be.
For viewers looking for a politically charged, community-centered horror film, there’s still value here. Just don’t expect the vampire mythology (or the spiritual elements) to take the conversation further than where it already started.