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.
