If the mark of great art (not good art, not perfect art, not eternal art) is how much interrogation it generates, then Sinners is great art. Love it or hate it, we’ll all be talking about it — and finding new ways to talk about it — for years.
I liked Sinners, but then, I would. I watch horror films every day. I love seeing Black stories told with care and competence. I love the blues as a music and a work ethic. I share many of director Ryan Coogler’s political sensibilities. I have been inside juke joints, specifically ones in and near Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Sinners is set. The night that the most famous blues musician in the world, B.B. King, died, I was at Po’ Monkey’s Lounge, which was the most famous juke joint in the world before it, too, died.
Even if you aren’t me, there is a lot to like in Sinners. Delroy Lindo is perfection as drank-weathered musician Delta Slim, standing in for all things blues on and off the stage, delivering scene-stealing quips and humor at every turn. Lead vampire Remmick is played with great relish by Jack O’Connell, and is genuinely captivating. As vampires go, he’s a great salesman, able to go from “aw shucks, ma’am” to throat ripping in sixty seconds.
First-time actor but longtime musician Miles Caton delivers a commendable turn as Sammy, aka Preacher Boy, a next generation blues talent torn between the church and the blues. I think too few people get that his “power” is more allegorical than literal, but whatever. Caton is a dope musician who acts just fine for this.
Always reliable Wunmi Mosaku is a treasure as Annie, a powerful and knowing root woman and love interest. She is captured cinematically with all the love her chocolate visage deserves, but her character’s real magic lies in aptly-applied knowledge. Mosaku’s Annie is a study of sublime range. Much is made of her being a non-traditional love interest, to which I say, y’all late. She did this in Lovecraft Country. She’s no stranger to sexy.
If you’re generally on the fence about Michael B. Jordan’s acting chops and think two of him is one Jordan too many, know that he avails himself admirably here. The characters he’s charged with playing – twin criminal brothers Smoke and Stack – are about his speed, though I would have appreciated a little more individuality in their portrayals. He does a good job here. He smolders, he hits a comic beat, and his action chops are put to good use.
The dance scene everyone is raving about is effective, and for some will be the most Black history they’ve accessed all year. It will be rightly praised for both its cinematic execution and cultural heft. More on that later.
Contrary to Spike Lee’s gushing review on the podcast 7PM in Brooklyn, Coogler has not, in fact, created a new genre of film. Sinners is a horror film. Claims to the contrary generally come from people who either a) haven’t seen enough horror, or b) want to lean into other things the film does that they appreciate (Black southern history, ancestral memory, representation, etc.). Vampires are culturally ancient, and Coogler’s film falls squarely in that lane. There are some plot holes here, but it wouldn’t be a horror film if there weren’t. Pretty much everyone who gets killed becomes a vampire, which begs the question, what will this growing army actually sustain themselves on? Why is there no consequence when [REDACTED] breaks down a door inside the juke? Are we expected to believe six people held off dozens of vampires once the invitation dam breaks? I got a list of these questions, but if you want sensible, measured behavior by characters in high tension situations, don’t watch horror films. Bad decisions are the fuel of horror movies.
That said, the horror elements hold up. It’s vampires doing what vampires do (with a few trope twists that more or less work, albeit too conveniently at times). I love the symbolism of a bunch of white folks party-crashing a juke joint in both political and artistic contexts. Much of the heavy lifting of the film’s colonizing polemic rests here, in the quiet-part-out-loud casting of the vampires as avatars for white supremacy’s never-ending attack on and subsuming of Black culture. Under the pretense of a twisted class unity ideal, the vampires demand Black bodies, powers, and creativity. The notion of offering Black people vampirism to cut loose social suffering is a perfect metaphor for neoliberalism: join our white-led band of well-meaning folks to build a better world. It will only cost you your liberty and soul. The offer is fool’s gold, and the Black characters are quick to sniff it out.
Certainly no one who isn’t a vampire is making a case to switch sides. Much of what we observe about how the vampires in Sinners work shows that the exact opposite is a more likely outcome. I mean, I hope you like river dancing, which is apparently a thing that becomes part of being an acolyte of an ancient Irish vampire: he gets to download his culture and pain into his converts. No thanks. I’ll stick to sweaty blues and the occasional twerk conjuring. It goes without saying that the cathartic slaughter of actual Klansmen and white supremacists never gets old.
As a horror fan, I appreciate Coogler’s tips of the hat to other horror films, especially the two John Carpenter notes that bleed into this affair. A lot of folks compare this film’s setup to Rodriguez’s From Dusk ‘Til Dawn. I get it. There’s practically a whole film that has nothing to do with vampires in front of the horror bits (so if you don’t like horror, you’ll be fine with this for about 45 minutes). That said, its action parts move a lot like Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, in that the location isn’t a trap, but a fort that must be defended. And then there’s the tense and hilarious garlic test scene straight out of Carpenter’s The Thing.
Of all the conversations Sinners seeks to generate, its chief thread is the one with the least narrative traction: Sammy’s religious struggle. For a film called Sinners, it doesn’t do nearly enough in the main story with this debate. Sure, if you fill in some gaps and sit through the final end credit sequence, you can stitch more of this conflict into cohesion. The film is ultimately Sammy’s story. Unfortunately, Sammy is more bait than decision-maker where it counts. That said, the film does eventually (albeit too subtly for some viewers, apparently) make good on what the real battle is. Sammy is not deciding between religion and the blues, or religion and evil. He is deciding between religion and the freedom to be the fullest human being he can be, to be a Black person who practices liberty in a world that seeks to box him into respectability and away from his gifts. Sinners shows how his gifts can be used, but then doesn’t apply that power to the problem at hand.
If you’re wondering if Sinners is worth seeing, absolutely. If you’re not into horror, Sinners has plenty of meat to chew on while you avert your gaze during the bloody bits. As horror movies go, Sinners is solid A tier.