Night Patrol director welcomes comparisons to Sinners

Polygon spoke with writer-director Ryan Prows after Night Patrol’s world premiere at the 2025 Fantastic Fest, and he said he isn’t worried about comparisons to Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, calling them a likely boost and part of a larger conversation in genre cinema.

Night Patrol mixes tongue-in-cheek humor with extreme gore to tell a story about police corruption, unchecked violence and institutional white supremacy. Justin Long and Jermaine Fowler play LAPD officers infiltrating a secretive unit called “Night Patrol,” while R.J. Cyler co-stars as a man who escapes one of the unit’s executions; the film and its trailer reveal the unit’s members are vampires — described in the film as white-supremacist cop vampires targeting LA’s Black and Brown communities. Prows previously earned acclaim for his 2017 debut Lowlife and has explored similar themes in other short work.

Prows said the movie ends on a dramatic mid-action beat, that he’s curious how audiences will react depending on how much they know going in, and that he would like to return to the story if the film is a hit. He also discussed casting Dermot Mulroney as a swaggering vampire lord, saying Mulroney read the script and understood the role; Night Patrol is in theaters now.

Key Topics

Culture, Night Patrol, Ryan Prows, Ryan Coogler, Justin Long, R.j. Cyler