Night Patrol tells the story of an LAPD officer who must put aside his differences with the area’s street gangs when he discovers a local police task force is harboring a horrific secret that endangers the residents of the housing projects he grew up in. The film is directed by Ryan Prows and stars Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, RJ Cyler, Freddie Gibbs, CM Punk, YG, Flying Lotus, Dermot Mulroney, Jon Oswald, and Nicki Micheaux.
Director Ryan Prows stopped by to chat with us about the film.
Hi Ryan!
Hey, good to meet you. That’s a cool shirt.
Oh, thank you very much. I had a great time with Night Patrol; what was it about it that made you want to direct?
We worked with the same writing team. It was a co-writer from our last film, Low Life. And while we were doing the festival run on that, we started kind of kicking around “What was next for the team?” And yeah, we all have a love of horror and monster movies specifically. And once we started kind of kicking around, what’s the scariest monster we could come up with? We landed on the LAPD and the rest is history.
Yeah, I love the Michael Dudikoff reference. All the young ones may not get that, but I certainly did.
(laughs) Yeah, Justin Long loved that line and he kind of ad-libbed that little bit too of just like, “you’re the only crip I know that knows who Michael Dudikoff is”. So, we were having fun with that. The new poster just came out, which is very rad and sent to Justin that he resembled a young, tough Michael Dudikoff. So that was the highest praise we could give internally.
Literally, you can’t say anything better than that. I love seeing Justin in a role like this. Why was he so perfect for it?
Yeah, it was so cool. The initial thought there was like, let’s be able to approach him with something that he hadn’t done before. I’ve been a fan of his for forever and seeing his body of work. I just knew he could really push himself and lay it down. And he delivered, like over-delivered on that front. It was so fun to watch as we were shooting, just like him. And in just a way we’ve never seen Justin before. Like he is tough as hell and was always running and doing stunts and everything. So, he was super game, and I feel like it’s going to be a new fun look for him, for sure.
I love the lore behind it and then the tone where it’s very serious just feels like it takes place in the real world but then there’s this fantastical element as well. Can you talk about the challenges of making everything feel like it’s taking place in the real world?
Yeah, as we were putting it all together, we really wanted to make it feel very authentic on all fronts. So, we worked with a tech advisor on the LAPD side. We wanted to shoot specifically in LA for LA. And I was introduced to a bunch of either former gang or current gang members and activists and community leaders. And just to make sure we were kind of honest on all sides of it. So, that once we do get into the supernatural element, that also feels oddly grounded and scary and all the more real for that as well.
You’ve got some pretty awesome kills and gore in there as well. Do you like to do as much practically as possible?
Yeah, definitely. We had a great practical team, Josh Russell and Sierra Spence. And I’d worked with them on my previous film as well. And then Justin Martinez worked on, he did our VFX and kind of worked hand in glove a bit with some of the design for the creature effects and stuff. But as much as we could kind of get away with, again, just making everything feel grounded and real and lived in. That’s definitely my favorite stuff to do. It was a little bit of a challenge just with how tight our schedule was. But it was like, to me, and marshalling resources, that was like where we wanted to kind of put our efforts to was just to make sure that stuff came off and felt real so that you could just sort of lose yourself and make like a vampire documentary if you will.
There’s some great music in it. What role did the music play in shaping the film’s atmosphere?
Yeah, I mean, again, I worked with a composer I’d worked with before, Pepin Khadran and he is really just, I feel like, on the forefront of shaping a tone and kind of pushing like we really vibe on kind of out there scores, but still feels of a piece with a film. So, I was really lucky to get him back. And then, as we were casting the film, we just had an opportunity to work with so many cool musicians or music artists that we would be remiss if we didn’t try to get like a Freddie Gibbs track in there or a YG track. And YG came on as an EP as well. And so, he helped sort of help fill out the rest of the needle drops and everything that we did on the hip hop side. And then to me, it was a cool character turn for Wazi that he’s like the one punk kid and surrounded by more like traditional, just like whatever’s on the radio, hip hop or whatever in the area. So, one of the producers, Josh Goldblum, is like pretty juiced into that world. And then one of the guys that we cast in it, Colin Young, has also helped get really cool punk bands like Soul Glow or Burn is like an old rev records band. So, we were able to, I don’t know, like pull it from all sides but then make that really just feel like a full part of the film.
Without going into any spoilers, if someone said to you, “we would like to do a follow up to this movie”, would you have any ideas of where you could take it?
Yeah, we’ve got a pitch for like what to do with a sequel to it just because like the mythology is so cool and that was a big early piece of like the writers. We all were just having fun with building out like what we were doing with the vampire lore and the lore of the Night Patrol specifically and where you could take that. And obviously like on the other end of it, like the Zulu sort of bits that we bring into it. So yeah, there’s definitely more room to give us way more money and we’ll go do a big Godfather II level saga of Night Patrol (laughs).
Oh, I’ll be there for that for sure. Were there any scenes or ideas that you had to remove from this one or that you would like to move into a later sequel?
Yeah, I mean, it was like pretty tightly plotted just for budget and schedule sake. But there was some stuff that we had always kind of joked about doing a bit of like a post-credit sequence where it’s almost like a breaking news story of what happens directly after the end of the film. So, we were always talking about having fun with that kind of stuff. But then it just kind of came back to what was the tightest, strongest package we could do for the film?
What would you like audiences to take away from the film?
I really just hope it if not spurs conversation, continues a conversation. I hope they have fun with it and like all the thrills and the chills and it’s gory and it’s a rollercoaster ride. But then hopefully there’s something in there for people to kind of go grab a coffee afterwards and keep talking about and carry on the conversation that the film is having.
Well, thank you very much for taking time to chat.
Thank you!
Look forward to chatting with you again for part 2.
Absolutely!
NIGHT PATROL will be In Theaters on January 16, 2026