Review: 'Night Patrol' is a slice of real life in the United States

First things first: ACAB and Fuck Ice. If you’re living anywhere in the world, you should be well aware of what’s happening in the United States. A dictator with tiny hands bolstered his own secret army with ICE since his second inauguration in 2025, and social media is flooded with videos of tragic killings, human beings of all ages being dragged away, and countless anti-ICE protests. Ryan Prows’ new film, Night Patrol, feels like one of those clips.

From random raids of people’s homes to men, women, and children being packed into cages, the film, which Prows co-wrote with Shaye Ogbonna, Tim Cairo, and Jake Gibson, confronts reality with blinding clarity. It’s difficult to say that I liked the film, but it does effectively capture the truth. Horror has always been about exposing reality’s ills—They Live, Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker, and Get Out are just a few examples of films that force you to wake up. With Night Patrol, the creative team shows you what’s happening in broad daylight. It doesn’t avoid the unavoidable, and it doesn’t need to crank up the volume. It’s already blasting in our ears every day.

The film follows an LAPD cop, Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler), and his discovery that the local law enforcement hides a deep, dark secret behind their badges and white supremacy. Xavier dreams of penetrating the inner circle of the exclusive club that is night patrol, a regime of police officers who vow to protect and serve in the dead of night (and do anything but). His partner, Ethan Hayworth (Justin Long), proves to be just another cop on a power trip and conceals the truth from Xavier. One of the first scenes with Ethan involves the fatal shooting of a young Black woman who fully complied with the officers’ demands and found herself dead. No matter what she did, it was always going to end this way.

Xavier’s brother, Wazi (RJ Cyler), and mother, Ayanda (Nicki Micheaux), become stuck between a rock and a hard place as the night patrol draws nearer. When Ethan knocks on Ayanda’s door in search of Wazi, a savagely uncomfortable and tense scene unravels. The suffocating dread is neither insidious nor lying in wait. It’s right there, pounding on your temples. Prows forces the viewer to hold their breath, just waiting for a cop to abuse his power for God or ‘Merica or whatever. The script is fine-tuned to reality; the conversations, the relationships, and the power dynamics between the disenfranchised and those wielding an obscene amount of power are honest, grounded, and pulverizing.

Ryan Prows’ Night Patrol arrives as a polarizing film. It’s a jarring reality filtered through a fictional story and may turn off many viewers. It’s a guarantee and should make your blood boil (complementary???). Some of the best art confronts, provokes, and uncovers truth, and Night Patrol does so in every conceivable way. It might not check all the boxes, but you’ll definitely be talking about it.

Night Patrol hits theaters this Friday (January 16).