Shudder’s latest horror film Night Patrol is set to arrive in theaters this Friday (January 16th), but a select few got the chance to see the film early at New York City’s Magic Johnson Theater, during a screening hosted by the Hip Hop Gamer. The film’s writer/director Ryan Prows was in attendance along with cast members RJ Cyler and Freddie Gibbs.
Night Patrol is a film that follows Wazi played by Cyler who is a young man living in LA and finds himself the target of the LAPD. However the film adds a vampire twist to the storyline sending Wazi, his mom and a former rival gang member into a battle to survive while working together. During the post screening Q&A, Prows was asked by a student from Denzel Washington School of the Arts where he got the idea for the film from. Prows explained that watching what is considered genre films, playing video games and reading comic books growing up inspired his creativity, and encouraged the young man who asked to keep going. “Read, watch movies, the more you can soak up the more you can pull from when you’re creating yourself”, Prows said. Cyler followed up about sticking to being a gamer iterating that prior to acting he just played games. “What it is that you do for a living a career or what not, it has to be something that you are passionate about. So if you’re passionate about video games and no one else understands that, then that means you are doing the right thing,” Cyler said. Gibbs who is known for being a rap artist as well as building his acting resume said, “This is something that I always wanted to do, it just happened to be secondary to my music career. But if you ask anybody that I work with on the acting side, I’m there taking it in the same way that I take the music in. I’m gonna say this to you, if you want to act, just know the whole script, know everybody parts, not just yours. Don’t come up, show up, reading. You just got to just take everything seriously and just be punctual, be diligent in your work. That’s all I can say.” Gibbs said.
While both Cyler and Gibbs’ characters were crucial to the film, there was one character who was played by Nicki Micheaux that stood out. While Micheaux wasn’t present at the screening, Gibbs spoke on her significance stating, “She bonded all of us together, and by the end of the movie she became like all of our mothers”. She was really the conduit the glue for the whole thing, he said.
Towards the end of the Q&A, Prows was asked which other director he wanted to work with, which he simply replied with no hesitation, Ryan Coogler. Coogler’s Sinners has influenced films like Night Patrol, and the Hip Hop Gamer cheered for a future Ryan and Ryan collaboration. Besides performances from RJ Cyler, and Freddie Gibbs, you can catch performances by Justin Long, Jermaine Fowler, Dermot Mulroney and CM Punk in Night Patrol.
