It could sound outrageous for a film involving vampires to say that Ryan Prows might’ve been witnessing the reality he put on screen when doing research for “Night Patrol,” but the director saw something irrefutably true as he got in touch with both former gang members and police while doing research for the thriller – that it was easy for those on both sides to no longer see each other as human. For all the violence in his follow-up to his auspicious 2018 feature debut “Lowlife,” which found plenty of dark humor in organ harvesting, what ends up really cutting deep is how taking up arms is made all the easier when people don’t think they’re taking aim at somebody else but rather something else — groups turned into monolithic blobs over time, making the bullets fly fast and furiously on the streets of Los Angeles.
The elite task force that gives “Night Patrol” its title brings this upon themselves to some degree when they are masked beyond recognition, so much so that you know that Hawkins (Justin Long) still has a way to go before he makes rank when he isn’t all covered up. He is paired with Xavier (Jermaine Fowler), a former Crip who is unlikely to ever be invited to join either because of his background or the color of his skin, but the thought of a promotion puts them at odds when Hawkins is asked to prove himself by killing a woman whose biggest crime is being out late one evening by his superior (CM Punk) when bringing her in on specious charges would be less convenient. As it happens, the woman is the girlfriend of Xavier’s brother Wazi (RJ Cyler), who is hardly the type to get revenge yet becomes a target as well when he was the only witness to her murder, and while the partners aren’t immediately aware of Xavier’s personal connection to the case, it poses problems down the line in the investigation, as does the fact that there’s a reason beyond the expectations of crime occurring that the Night Patrol only conducts business when the sun is down.
While segregation is seen as a major issue in “Night Patrol,” Prows is careful to avoid that himself, blending various genres with plenty of muscle behind it and mashing up hardcore punk and hip hop in the film’s soundtrack to give the action a real edge. The director also continually casts against type in giving more serious roles to Long and Fowler than they usually play, adding to the sense of surprise that runs throughout. After raising pulses at both Fantastic Fest and Beyond Fest last fall, “Night Patrol” is blasting into theaters later this week and Prows spoke about making it a bloody good time with something still on its mind, as well as what it was like to join a grand tradition of Los Angeles films at night and putting together the film’s thrashing soundtrack.
There’s this very clever idea of dehumanization driving this — you’ve got vampires, but also how people see one another after so many years of hatred building up between them. What was it like to create an unresolvable conflict in that way?
That was an early conversation, as you’re building a monster movie, like what’s the monster, what are we up against? What’s so great about horror is you can tackle these really tough issues that would be unwatchable if it was just a straight-ahead drama, so you can have fun with it. You can push the envelope of it and hopefully at the end of the day, it’s sparking some kind of conversation beyond watching the film.
From early on, [we thought] how do we make the most authentic version of this world and these characters. We’re part of a long lineage of LAPD or L.A. hood movies and everything in between, so as we were starting, my thought was, “Let’s make this feel as real and authentic as possible so that when the supernatural elements come in, you almost buy that more and that makes that even scarier, but then also for the film itself we worked with the specific communities that we were portraying to make those characters really shine. And it was important for us to shoot L.A. for L.A. and for us to go get introduced to people around Watts or meet some of the cops to do our due diligence, mainly more with the community activists and leaders to make sure we’re being respectful. We’re portraying this realistically and everybody’s involved to make it something special and different and real.
From what I understand, this went through several iterations. How did this find the right shape?
It sure did. We’ve been working on it since “Lowlife,” and I feel like it finally found the right way to come about because we had like different people in different roles throughout, and I’m just pinching myself at like the cast that we ended up with and how committed they were to the movie and how far everybody pushed themselves.
Justin Long and Jermaine Fowler in particular seem like really unconventional choices for this. Were you always thinking against the grain for these roles?
Yeah, I gravitate towards that for two reasons. Practically, making a small scrappy indie, you can get very talented people excited about it or interested in it if it’s something different than what they’ve done, but for the movie itself, it’s so exciting to me to see, for instance, Justin Long in a way you’ve never seen him before. He’s such a great actor, obviously, and you knew the commitment was going to be there, but for him to dig down in and find something so fresh and different and scary, [where he was] intimidating, that was the fun of watching it come together.
As you mentioned, it’s joining a long lineage of L.A. movies and it has its own style while clearing having the influence of some others that came before. What was it like to think about capturing the city visually at night?
It really was finding the locations and the atmosphere of that.and then figuring out how to make it feel real while also augmenting it, making the choices we needed for the cinema of it all. If I had my druthers or a Michael Mann-level budget, we’d be putting in sodium vapor lights and this would be set in the ’90s and it’d be the most ’90s looking thing you’ve ever seen in your life. But making it feel current and real also [involved] how do we make the LED of the police lights, but also those security lights that are in the public housing that are on 24/7 a character in the movie as well?
The soundtrack also is a really great fusion of punk and hip-hop that honors what’s come before. What was it like to put together?
It was cool. Working with Pepijn Caudron, who goes by the stage name Kreng, was so great and I’d worked with him before and it was important to me that our producers were all steeped in connections to both sides of the hip-hop world and then the punk world [because of] R.J. [Cyler]’s character Wazzy, being this little weird punk kid in the middle of this world where you wouldn’t [expect that]. That would be something fresh and working with these really cool punk bands and then getting YG and Freddie Gibbs and Hit Boy to give us music, it could have not gone that way, but it was just awesome how it happened and how we pushed to make something. I thought it was a cool way to use both needle drops and our score and we were always joking about the “Judgment Night” soundtrack as a North star [with] punk and hip hop combined, joining forces.
Is it true you shot this in just 16 days?
Yeah, and of course, there were tense moments, but that’s filmmaking in general. When we made that decision we were going to shoot in L.A., we’re going to have to give up some stuff. some of that being the amount of days we could shoot. But we were able to then pull the best crews together that are L.A.-based. Our makeup team was second to none and they had all the practical stuff ready and worked out and I think that’s then the fun of shooting practically with effects or not shooting on locations rather than on a stage is the alchemy or the magic of the moment happens and you’re just riding that. It makes it feel real and unexpected all the more. Then it becomes a mindset of tackling that [thinking] we’re going to use any minuses we have as pluses, and it’s going to become part of what we’re trying to do with the movie. The cool thing was the crew and especially the cast were all really game for that. It was difficult. We were shooting nights and Justin Long is covered in fake blood for half of the movie, but their willingness to be able to go along for the ride was a big part of how we got it done.
“Night Patrol” opens in theaters on January 16th.