A masterful work of historically minded, character based horror, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners hits like a wooden stake to the heart that’s been shot out of a cannon substituting jet fuel for gunpowder. A complex, ambitious, ingenious, visually stunning, and wildly entertaining genre concoction, Sinners is destined to go down among the greats. A movie that fires on all possible cylinders, wears its genre influences proudly, and still offers more food for thought than most “prestige” projects ever could, Sinners is a fucking masterpiece. Full stop. It’s as close to a perfect cinematic experience as one could ever hope to get.
After spending some time up North in Chicago, supposedly working as foot soldiers for Al Capone, twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in a dual role) return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1936, keen on opening an old school juke joint. They have the cash (although it was likely procured through double crossing their former employers), the food, the liquor, and the musicians to make their new venture a success, especially with their younger, virtuoso guitarist cousin Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton) as the star attraction. The Smokestack Brothers are local legends, with their time away from the rural cotton fields only growing their standing, but not everyone is happy to see them, especially Stack’s former flame, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who’s angry not only that they left, but that they couldn’t be asked to come to her mother’s funeral after she helped give the twins a good life. Smoke also reconnects with former lover and spiritual believer/healer Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), which stirs up some conflicted, but more loving feelings. Over the course of a single day back in town, the brothers are set to open up their bar on the site of a former sawmill owned by the Ku Klux Klan, but their biggest problem will come in the form of a mysterious trio of white musicians (Jack O’Connell, Peter Dreimanis, and Lola Kirke) who want to play a little and say they have money to spend. They’re very hungry, but they need an invitation to come inside. You can probably guess what these folks are from that last sentence.
Writer-director Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther, Creed) doesn’t get to the horror elements of Sinners straight out of the gate, but there’s plenty of dread and foreboding to be found in the lengthy, sunny set-up. Coogler creates a picture of a community in total: their beliefs, their relationships, their conflicts, their sexual desires, and most importantly for a film that will veer into horror territory, their fears. While the film is a great showcase for the talents of Jordan as a leading man – delivering a career best-to-date turn as equally dangerous, but ideologically different brothers – Sinners strikes as more of an ensemble piece where each character has a rich, fulfilling backstory down to the supposedly smallest part.
Local Asian grocers and Smokestack allies Grace and Bo Chow (Li Jun Li and Yao) are successful, but clearly outliers in the predominantly black and white community. Caton’s revelatory debut performance as the son of a preacher who desperately wants to leave town to be a serious musician is the beating heart of Sinners. Steinfeld is an outcast in both the black and white communities thanks to her heritage, and Stack’s complicated affections for her are explained in one of the film’s most heartwrenching, non-horrific scenes. Delroy Lindo has his best role in ages as a hard drinking, aging bluesman who gains a lot of clarity and shows a lot of wisdom over the course of the chaotic evening. Doorman Cornbread (Omar Miller) hesitates in accepting the brothers’ offer of work because he’s dead set on providing the best life for his family possible. Even the film’s chief antagonist – an unhinged and charismatic O’Connell – is shown a small amount of sympathy, portrayed as an Irish ex-pat who was turned into a monster by British colonizers and religious zealots. In another keen twist, vampires carry with them a degree of passive aggression that’s interesting to think about; presenting themselves as people who want peace and unity, but they really want to drain the life from any culture they touch.These aren’t merely people dealing with an infection of vampirism. It’s an entire community at war with itself, and a pointed metaphor for a cultural struggle for identity and heritage that continues to this day without abatement.
The struggles faced by the workers, patrons, suppliers, musicians, and owners at Club Juke carry a high degree of specificity and socio-historical context. The impact of Jim Crow laws, slavery, colonization, and capitalism weigh heavily on Coogler’s mind throughout Sinners. It’s also a love letter to the healing and hurting power of music at the same time. All of the characters – good and evil – express themselves in some way through musicality, whether playing it, singing it, or engaging with it through dance or acknowledgement. Music, as the film shows (most notably during a surreal performance that blends past, present, and future), connects one to their ancestors, and vampirism is a form of indoctrination that robs people of those roots and bonds. By that same token, the vampires also express themselves through music, and in what might be Coogler’s most striking visual sequence there’s a great deal of sorrow and pain to be found amidst the tension the filmmaker and ace cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw are crafting with every beat and step. And the accompanying score from Ludwig Göransson is an all timer, blending classical, folk, spiritual, blues, electronica, and even some heavy metal into an infectious stew. It’s one of the best scores I’ve ever heard in a film, and one of the most fitting for a film pitched at such a high level of difficulty.
And when it comes time for Sinners to get bloody, brutal, and bitey, Coogler doesn’t disappoint, offering up a righteously gory climax that will go down in genre movie history. Shades of Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (and to a lesser extent, The Faculty), John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Peter Jackson’s go-for-broke early work Dead Alive are all present in Coogler’s work once things go off the deep end, and all of it comes across with exceptional impact because the filmmakers and cast have gone the extra mile to make sure the viewer cares deeply about the situation at hand. Sure, horror movie fans can be satisfied by well timed jump scares, epic battles between good and evil, and geysers of blood, but Coogler adds layers of substance, craft, and sexiness to make Sinners unforgettable. It’s as close to flawless as filmmaking gets.
And don’t even think about getting up and leaving as soon as the credits start rolling. Don’t do it. You’ll regret it.
Sinners opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, April 18, 2025.
