Ryan Prows on Night Patrol: Vampires, Cops, and LA’s Dark Heart

January’s reputation as a graveyard for lacklustre horror has been thoroughly upended in recent years. Enter Ryan Prows’ Night Patrol, a film that’s anything but ordinary. With Justin Long and Jermaine Clement leading a striking ensemble, the story trails an LA police officer who stumbles upon a clandestine LAPD unit—one that may prove more menacing than the monsters they’re meant to hunt.

We caught up with director and co-writer Ryan Prows to discuss his vision for Los Angeles, his approach to vampire mythology, and the delicate balance of authenticity and genre spectacle. The conversation ranged from the city’s cinematic legacy to the social bite of horror.

Los Angeles: Character and Canvas

Prows, originally from Atlanta, admits it took time to warm to LA. Yet, the city has become both home and muse.

“That’s very accurate, I would say. Very astute. I’m from Atlanta originally and moved out here to go to film school, where I met all of my friends and colleagues that we all made Lowlife together, and then a lot of us went forward and made this as well. But growing up, like everybody, we just loved LA movies. And specifically for this movie, there’s almost like a subgenre of LA cop movies — LAPD movies and LA gang movies.”

He wanted to honour LA as a living, breathing character, insisting on shooting in the city itself, even if it meant fewer shooting days. The payoff? Crews who know the city inside out, and a cast who could sleep in their own beds after long nights on set.

He’s quick to cite influences beyond the obvious.

“Southland Tales, not on the face of it, but now that you say it, that’s probably just imprinted in my DNA. I do like those kinds of — I don’t want to say ‘second run,’ but the lesser-known sort of LA movies. Domino is a great, sort of gnarly LA movie. The one with Woody Harrelson where he’s a cop, Rampart, we looked at that a lot, my DP and I. Just the visual treatment of LA. The show The Shield as well did that really well.”

The city’s sunlight, filtered through smog, becomes a motif—both beautiful and oppressive, much like LA itself. Modern police car LEDs, he notes, are “the brightest thing you’ve ever seen in your life,” a detail that seeps into the film’s atmosphere.

Building a World: Authenticity and Community

Night Patrol’s Los Angeles is layered, with communities and factions that feel lived-in. Prows credits this to deep research and collaboration.

“That was a big piece of it: wanting to make everything feel grounded in the real world so that even when the vampire stuff pops off, that somehow oddly feels real world and grounded and that much more scary. But we’ve been working on this film since Lowlife, so I was fortunate enough to get introduced to some community leaders in Watts and South Central that showed us around to different public housing spots and introduced us to current and former gang members as well.”

He worked closely with local leaders and organisations, ensuring the script resonated with those it depicted. Even the fictional gangs were named by YG, who also served as executive producer, lending further credibility to the world-building.

Ensemble horror, Prows suggests, is having a moment.

“I think just in general, it was really exciting as we were starting to build the script and the story of being able to tackle these very real, awful horrors in the world from multiple angles and multiple points of view, and doing our homework and having everybody feel, again, authentic and grounded.”

The film’s structure allows for a collision of cultures and perspectives, keeping audiences guessing how the threads will intertwine.

Horror as Social Commentary

Night Patrol doesn’t shy away from weighty themes. Prows sees horror as uniquely equipped to probe society’s anxieties.

“Horror is, no matter what, political and social from the jump, which is one of my big pluses to the whole thing and why we wanted to do it and make a horror film as well. You can tackle these bigger issues, but it can still be fun, and it won’t feel like you’re watching someone soapbox to you or just sitting there and lecturing you or whatever.”

He’s keen to keep things entertaining, with moments of levity to offset the darkness. The aim is to spark conversation, not deliver a sermon.

The film’s exploration of law enforcement is unflinching.

“Yeah, I think it’s a conversation that obviously needs to be had and/or continued. It’s not like people aren’t talking about it, and I don’t think our little movie is running with the flag of it, but it was really important for us to pretty plainly lay all of that out. The movie, I think, doesn’t pull any punches or hide what it’s about or what we’re bringing up.”

For Prows, it’s about presenting the world as it is, letting the audience draw their own conclusions.

Vampire Lore and Visual Innovation

On the technical side, Night Patrol plays with genre conventions. Prows relished the chance to introduce new twists to vampire mythology.

“The cool thing to me about vampire stuff, or vampire media, is that you get to introduce your rule and how your monster behaves, and that’s a lot of the fun that we have in the movie: everybody sort of trying to figure out what vampire movie we’re in as they’re going through it.”

He drew on African folklore for details like metal fangs, while sticking to classic rules—mind control, healing with blood, and so on. The use of negative colour and other visual tricks was about capturing the altered state of vampirism in a way that felt both fresh and grounded.

Gore, too, is carefully paced.

“Well, I’m excited that we finally got the second one made and I can actually be creating a kind of body of work. And I can see how, to your point, this is how we structure things or lay stuff out. The three other writers and myself, we all wrote on Lowlife together as well, and it just started from the script of, ‘you’ve got to come out with a bang,’ and we kind of moved around what that bang was a little bit in the script stage and once we shot it and were editing it. We were playing with different openings and stuff, but it’s that straight structure of the emotional ups and downs you can do.”

The result is a film that ratchets up tension, never letting the audience get too comfortable.

Night Patrol arrives in cinemas on 15 January.