Sinners

 

Sinners

Writer & Director ~ Ryan Coogler

2025, United States-Australia-Canada

Stars ~ Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Saul Williams

 

‘Sinners’ has a lot on its mind, so much so that it often feels like numerous films competing with one another. Like Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’, it increasingly feels overstuffed to the point of a mess but marked by moments where brilliance stakes a claim. The trailer hinted at something like a lynching narrative coded in horror aesthetic, and if I hadn’t run into a spoiler, I would not have known exactly where this was going. The first half has such an accomplished sense of time and place with rich performances that this deepens what comes next.

 

The slow-burn period build-up is strong and often beautiful and makes clear that, before you can say ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’, that this is more than just about vampires. Themes of racism, appropriation, the cathartic and healing properties of music, finding a space of your own, all are touched upon. The implication that interracial relationships won’t survive is troubling but understandable, and part of the defiant streak that the film struts with. There is a strong sense of the uncompromising, one that has been met with box office success and popularity.

 

Michael B. Jordan plays twins (this is a thing now, what with ‘The Monkey’ and, bafflingly/unproductively, ‘The Alto Knights’) Smoke and Stack who roll into town to buy and put on a dance for a blacks-only juke joint, more-or-less in a day. They’re hoodlums whose reputation precedes them, leaving Capone and Chicago behind, who shoot their own and operate in that Criminal Folk Hero zone. Again, this might be read as a part of the obdurate, unapologetic attitude, and Jordan has all the charisma twofold to hold everything down. All the performances are staunch, but it is Miles Caton who is the real find here, and when he first opens his mouth to sing, it’s a golden moment that no amount of music video editing of the subsequent dance scenes can surpass. Indeed, the showy editing of the dance scenes does no favours capturing the raw natural talent on display. The film even whips itself into a frenzy for a fourth-wall breaking sequence where the theme of music as cultural defiance breaks naturalism to take centre-stage.

 

When the horror kicks in, it takes the form mostly of repeated and elongated “Let me in!” stand-offs. Vampirism equates to appropriation, to hive-mind white duplicity and aggression: you get bit, you turn against your own. Yet it’s the vampires that are multi-cultural, because being predatory crosses boundaries. The theme of music summoning devils is foregrounded and yet amorphous: Sammi apparently summoning “devils” by wanting to be a free and joyous talent seems a cruelty, a punishment for anyone stepping out of a religious rigidity. Surviving and setting out on his own is the real triumph here.

 

And, really, if they’d just kept their heads, they’d have likely survived the night since they’d done so well with the “Let me in!” confrontations. And it just can’t resist turning to revenge fantasy and martyrdom for the finale, for which it has already done with the supernatural drama. It’s the whole vibe and boldness that makes ‘Sinners’ work, for the horror is pretty straightforward, except maybe for vampires indulging crazily in an Irish jig.

 

And then there was a little “And that’s your ending?” At the viewing I attended, a third of the audience had left before the mid-credits final scene, a final scene that is not an addition but surely a relevant endnote to what’s gone before with gangster-and-moll imagery; a coda that reflects on what we thought was the closure. And it seems that I left before a further second credits scene. When credits roll, I have already checked out and filing away what I have experienced, think and feel from a film, so asking to invest again simply disrupts my immersion. I am not a fan of mid-credits sequences.  It is also a coda that fully succumbs to the sentimentality the film has for itself. Evan Romano writes, “Sinners is a story about family, about taking control of your own life, your own space, and your own narrative. And the ending here finds people who, one way or another, despite the obstacles thrown at them along the way, have managed to do that in distinctly different ways.” Not sure about the fraternal bonds transcend vampirism angle (do vampires keep promises?), but community for sure. The documentary ‘Horror Noir’ describes how the black community loved horror but horror didn’t love it back, and ‘Sinners’ certainly scratches that itch, its “Nope, not gonna invite you in” drawing a cultural line in the sand: it has a definite audience in mind. And if I feel less sentimental about the central characters, it is because empathy is mitigated for gangsters who’ll shoot a child in the leg for the sake of keeping a badass reputation.

 

There is so much in the execution and performance of ‘Sinners’ that is great, , but as is apparent, I just felt left with an annoyance of being unconvinced of just as much as I enjoyed (not least the underwhelming defeat of the vampires), and the feeling that it didn’t all gel despite its ambition and strengths. There’s a lot of juggling here, of themes, characters, genre, and ultimately of as many flaws as strengths, despite its convictions.

 

Explorer from Another World

Explorer from Another World

Director ~ Woody Edwards

Writers ~ Woody Edwards & Stu Fastback

2024, USA

Stars ~ Woody Edwards, Stu Fastback, Dan Freel

 

Cheekily packaged with a poster that, at a glance, resembles ‘Invaders from Mars’ (1953), the pleasure is in ‘Explorer from another World’s recreation of a beloved sci-fi era with modern gore excess. The made-on-a-farm captures and red-and-green predominance captures both the feel of low-budget B-movie outer space invasions and the palette of classics like ‘Forbidden Planet’ and ‘This Island Earth’. It’s definitely playing to the so-bad-it’s-good agenda, but straight enough to be affectionate rather than satirical.

The end credits behind-the-scenes glimpses reveal what a small production this is (nineteen people, I read), and its winning points are not going too zany, standing by a brief runtime, being an obvious labour-of-love and excellent alien design. A delightful homage. 

Cloud

 

Cloud

Kuraudo ~ クラウド

Writer & Director ~ Kiyoshi Kurosawa

2024, Japan

Stars ~ Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Daiken Okudaira

 

Ryôsuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is an online reseller, so much in his bubble that he’s unaware and uncaring of what effect his business has on buyers. He says he sells things before he even knows if they are fake. There are clues, sure, like dead animals left on his doorstep, but he’s indifferent. He works in a factory as a front, seemingly has a freewheeling girlfriend with whom he talks about an idyllic future, but reselling would seem to be his passion. They’re both ambitious and their dreams of living a more adorned, carefree life have the feel of adolescent lovers.

With no music or melodrama to prepare you, the straightforward, seemingly unfussed, precise presentation of the first half does not openly gesture where the second will go (although a poster does give it away). It feels like a character piece until it turns into a thriller. The film is interested in the direct line between online hate groups and lynch mobs, in the dislocation of online existence that can delude someone that there are no consequences for their actions; that they are not responsible and that a digital world gives them an immunity. What emerges is the portrait of customers so rightly aggrieved by internet scammers that their sense of impotence and outrage metastasises into something psychotic. For formerly apathetic Yoshii’s part, it’s a rude awakening and revelation of the full extent and repercussions of his sociopathy. (So, I don’t agree with PeterSobczynski that it devolves into “just another empty shoot-em-up.”) 

 Kurosawa is known for his disturbing slow-burners ‘Cure’, ‘Pulse’, ‘Creepy’, but there’s also the straight but disquieting drama ‘Tokyo Sonata’ to highlight how much he’s interested in human dynamics. ‘Cloud’ becomes a thriller in the same way that ‘A Brighter Summer’s Day’ also aligned with the gangster genre, or ‘Custody’ and ‘Parasite’ with horror tropes, or even ‘Burning’s hinting at the serial killer genre. None of these let the excursions into side-genres usurp the character drama, and even if ‘Cloud’ embraces its shoot-out in an abandoned factory set-piece, it never loses its perspective of a bewildered Yoshii finding himself in a full-throttle thriller scenario.

Yoshii remains an enigma until the very end; an ending that implies that he has been equally a mystery to himself. Yet it seems that those around him know exactly what he is – an opportunity, it ultimately appears. It’s certainly a narrative critical of the displacement and anger that the online world can induce, although with its end beats it makes clear that we are no less fooled and conned in the real world by ourselves and others.

‘Cloud’ makes for a vaguely elusive treatise on the modern condition, on fraud, on culpability and aggrievement, but under the guise of a direct if pensive shoot-out. It’s an off-kilter revenge thriller from one angle and a slightly opaque character study from another in a world of fraud and aggrievement. ‘Cloud’ hits both the enjoyment marks for fans of  slow-burn and of thriller cinema whilst shuffling your allegiances to who’s the good guys, if any. For Alex Papaioannou, it is a film “just so inherently angry and saddened by the state of humanity.” And that’s what makes it  fascinating beneath a deceptively patient veneer and its excellent final set piece.