Tag Archives: Tim Cairo

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Zulu Up in Here

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Night Patrol

by Hope Madden

Crime drama, social commentary, action flick, vampire movie—Night Patrol bites off a lot. But since director Ryan Prows and writers Tim Cairo, Jack Gibson and Shaye Ogbonna’s last teaming combined an organ harvesting crime caper with the life of a luchador, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Night Patrol opens on a young man (RJ Cyler) bleeding from a weapon still poking out of his ribs. He’s in police custody, sitting across from a nonplussed LAPD officer (Nick Gillie), who’d like him to explain himself.

Prows then flashes back a couple of days, introducing the young man, the girl he loves, and the LA cops known as Night Patrol. What follows is an allegory about white supremacy dressed up as some kind of higher calling but behaving as bloodthirsty beasts.

Apt, particularly after what we all witnessed in Minneapolis last Wednesday night.

Justin Long co-stars as a cop looking to get to the bottom of whatever it is Night Patrol is up to, and he’ll go to some regrettable means to meet those ends. But he hopes to be remembered as “one of the good ones”.

It’s unfair to compare Prows’s film with the similarly themed Sinners because it’s unfair to compare any film at all with Ryan Coogler’s masterpiece. Prows’s ire is focused on the here and now, and probably bears a closer resemblance to Bomani J. Story’s 2023 film The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster as well as Remington Smith’s 2025 festival favorite LandLord.

The theme is clear-eyed and relevant: Systemic racism in the U.S. is monstrous, its willing participants are monsters.

Prows solicits game performances from Cyler, Long, and especially Nicki Micheaux who dominates every scene she’s in, as only her character could.

Where Night Patrol falters is in its wild mix of tones and genres. For all its bloodsucking, this is no horror film. The violence is action violence, but even that is sometimes lost in the loonier, funnier moments. The rival gang is preoccupied with supernatural entities, including Lizard Men, giving the film a bizarre sense of humor that doesn’t fully fit.

The hodgepodge approach to genre hampers its castmates—Cyler, in particular—from finding a suitable performing style. Long is custom designed for this character, and Micheaux elevates the material, but with no discernable genre, Night Patrol leaves you a little dizzy.

Shudder Premiere

Excellent Day for an Exorcism

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Shadow of God

by Hope Madden

To Michael Peterson’s credit, he tried something new within the exhausted exorcism subgenre. Working from a script by Tim Cairo, Peterson’s Shadow of God wonders whether God’s will is really such a great deal for humans.

Mark O’Brien (Ready or Not) is Father Mason, an exorcist forced to take a leave of absence when his colleagues begin dying during their rituals. He is forbidden to perform an exorcism until the church can investigate. So, I guess it’s too bad he’s so convinced that his dad (Shaun Johnston) is possessed.

There’s a lot going on with Fr. Mason’s dad, not the least of which is that he died of a gunshot wound years back when police raided the cult he led. Pretty surprising, then, when Dad turns up at the cabin.

Here’s what you’re working with: Catholic priest, undead (resurrected?) father, cultists, isolated small town, cabin. Lucifer (Josh Cruddas, Anything for Jackson) makes an appearance, plus there’s lust in Fr. Mason’s heart for his old friend Tanis (Jacqueline Byers, Prey for the Devil). She’s a war veteran and psychologist, so the battle between divinity and psychology gets a nod as well. Plus, loads of childhood trauma.

Quite a mishmash of horror mainstays. Peterson and his cast make a valiant attempt at keeping it all afloat, but Shadow of God would probably have been better served by a bit of streamlining. The film’s big revelation, a subversive idea that certainly merits its own film, deserved a tighter focus.

Instead, enormous leaps in logic paired with wholly irrational decision-making obscure the mystery that might make the big revelation more intriguing.

The FX are bad. The Raiders of the Lost Ark moment is silly. But in terms of reconsidering exorcism tropes, Shadow of God has some big ideas. They don’t entirely work, but at least it’s novel.