Using horror as social commentary is not a new concept. With films like "Get Out," "Sinners," and "The Substance" receiving widespread acclaim and dominating the box office, it seems the genre is the hub for original storytelling as well as delivering a message relevant for today's times.
When asked why that is, filmmaker Ryan Prows explained, "I feel like [horror] movies are the movies that sit under your skin... the last thing I would want to do is make a soap-boxy, preachy, [film]. So yeah, it was always just like, how do we couch it, make something palatable, make something fun that, you know, we can kind of go farther than you would maybe be allowed to do if it was just like a straight up drama."
Prows, a director known for infusing social commentary into his films, sat down with The Latin Times recently to talk about his new film, "Night Patrol," a crime horror centered around a gang within the LAPD made up of vampires who feed on poor families in the projects of Los Angeles.
The concept itself lends itself to commentary on race, institutionalized violence and the wildly unreported issue of police gangs, which, while (debatably) not actual vampires, are a very real thing that many communities have to deal with, especially in Los Angeles. Since the 1970s, numerous key figures within the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department have formed gangs made up of other deputies, which often require some sort of violence towards a civilian for initiation into the gang.
Prows told The Latin Times that these incidents served as the baseline for portraying LA accurately in the movie, saying, "[Police gangs] definitely folded into it. And especially as we were doing research... a big part of it was... on the police and then obviously the community that we were going to be portraying or setting the film in...The LASD gang stuff...we were pulling a lot out of their insignias and stuff like that to be able to build out...the Night Patrol."
The film follows Wazi (played by RJ Cyler), a young man living in LA whose girlfriend becomes a victim of an initiate cop into the Night Patrol gang (played by Justin Long) and must take them on with his mother Ayanda (Nicki Micheaux) and Bornelius (played by rapper Freddie Gibbs in his feature film debut), a gang leader, to protect his neighborhood.
The Latin Times also sat down with Gibbs, Micheaux, and Cyler to talk about their roles in the film and how they approached their characters. Micheaux, who portrays the leader of the Zulus, a gang who focuses on African roots, that has fought off the Night Patrol before, also seemed to be invested in portraying her character accurately.
She said that "I had to talk to some female Crips to really understand it, you know? And that was fun because... it's not really part of pop culture. So, you know, really, it was really interesting to talk to the women who were part of that culture and what gang life is like for them. And especially, you know, being Ayanda, who's an older woman... She's not some kid. She's been in this for life."
But Gibbs seemed to feel at an immediate ease with his character, despite "Night Patrol" being his feature film debut, stating that all he felt he had to nail was "being a gangbanger," which to him "wasn't that hard really."
Another actor who seemed to flow with his character is Cyler, who when asked about building a mother/son chemistry with Micheaux, he affectionately referred to her as "Mama Nicki" and said she is "great as a person and also as an actress, so she didn't really have to, like, do too much to just be great to work with. I just had to. It was kind of hard to be upset and mad back and forth. Right? In some of our scenes where we kind of, you know, angry at each other because I'm like, oh, we were just talking about the greatest thing before this take."
You can catch "Night Patrol" in select theaters on January 16 and watch the full trailer here.
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