A bloody, muscular, barrelhouse of a vampire movie that throbs like the neck of a blues guitar on fire, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” might be the first story the “Creed” director has ripped straight from his own guts. This film thrillingly continues his post-“Fruitvale Station” tradition of filtering real and imagined Black histories through the prism of blockbuster entertainment, and of doing so in a way that recognizes genre as a living connection between the past and the future, as opposed to seeing it as a necessary evil of funding his art in the present.
“Sinners” is nothing if not a film about genre, and the distinctly American imperative of cross-pollinating between them to create something that feels new and old — high and low — at the same time. It’s a heartfelt and viscerally well-researched historical drama that introduces the blues as the devil’s music before fighting to reframe it as a kind of fourth-dimensional magic in its own right. It’s also a ridiculous and horny-as-hell creature feature that leverages Coogler’s enduring love for multiplex favorites like “The Faculty,” “The Thing,” and “From Dusk Till Dawn” in order to convey the hope, heartbreak, and humanity of Mississippi sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South.
“Sinners” is a movie where the fact of the old Delta’s Chinese-American population is affirmed by the fantasy of watching dozens of Black vampires perform a perfect Irish jig, and a movie in which the agonizing push-and-pull between safety and freedom — a tension familiar to any marginalized community — is perhaps best articulated by a shot of Hailee Steinfeld slowly dripping her spit into Michael B. Jordan’s open mouth. Despite being confined to a small handful of hyper-expressive locations (and the awestriking 65mm cotton fields between them), “Sinners” feels like it had to be shot on IMAX cameras just to fit all the different ingredients that Coogler wanted to mix into the stew. The film he’s made from them is inevitably too much at times, and not always in full command of its many competing flavors, but that too muchness is also the greatest strength of a visionary studio product that sticks its fangs deep into an eternal struggle: how to assimilate without losing your soul.
Collapsing centuries of joy and pain into the span of a single day, “Sinners” drops us into the rural fields of Clarksdale, Mississippi, on a blue-white morning in the fall of 1932, where Coogler immediately lays his cards on the table with a prologue that sacrifices a “From Dusk Till Dawn”-like surprise in favor of the narrative circularity offered by an ominous flash-forward. Rewinding 24 hours from there, “Sinners” engagingly begins to sing us the song of the Smokestack twins (Michael B. Jordan as Smoke, and Michael B. Jordan as Stack), who sweep back into town after being gone nine years in Chicago with some new threads, a small fortune in money stolen from Al Capone, and a dream of opening their own juke joint where Black laborers can safely let loose after a long day in the fields. It would be another 19 years before Langston Hughes thought to ask, “What happens to a dream deferred?,” but the brothers Smokestack already seem to know the answer to that question, which is fitting enough in a movie engaged in a rousing séance with its cultural anachronisms. The Juke, as they plan to call it, is going to open tonight. And it will be an opening night to remember.
A marvel of character-based world-building, the first act of “Sinners” busies itself with the process of putting that plan into action, as Smoke and Stack — introduced buying a busted old sawmill from a white guy who would rather burn the place down than sell it to them — drive around Clarksdale assembling a team capable of throwing the best rager in town. Their kid cousin Sammie is the first recruit, as rumors have spread far and wide about the local preacher’s son and his preternatural ability to conjure some kind of spirit on the blues guitar that Smoke and Stack gave him when he was younger. (Sammie is played by former H.E.R. backup singer Miles Caton, a raw but riveting discovery who’s entrusted with the heart of the movie and never lets it lose the beat.)
From there, the brothers rope in a boozy harmonica virtuoso named Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), who only accepts the gig after the brothers agree to pay him in Irish beer. (Lindo is delightful as the tetchy old-timer, playing him as a man who’s lived through just enough shit to still soil his drawers.) Then, there’s a waifish siren who has to sneak away from her controlling husband in order to sing freely (“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” actress Jayme Lawson is a revelation as Pearline). They even enlist the Chinese-American couple who run the town grocery store, as Grace (“Babylon” standout Li Jun Li) is the only person in Clarksdale who can whip up some legit-looking signage in less than six hours.
The film’s ensemble cast is so rich and textured that I’d just as soon watch them in a sprawling drama as I would a schlock-adjacent vampire saga that will eventually bleed them dry. They’re dressed in Ruth Carter’s instantly transportive costumes, rendered in the light of Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s thick and humid cinematography, and brought to life by the swagger of Coogler’s ultra-confident direction. That “Sinners” doesn’t feel like a waste of a half-dozen other great actors’ talents is a testament to Michael B. Jordan’s immaculate dual performances as the siblings. He’s dynamic and alive in a way that allows this movie to be at least two things at any one time — not just silly and serious, but also aggressive and protective, ruthless and loving.
Initially only distinguishable by the fact that Smoke wears a blue pageboy cap while Stack rocks a burnt red fedora, the twins soon develop into the two most nuanced characters Jordan has ever played. There’s a terrific frisson in seeing how these identical brothers receive strength from each other, but “Sinners” really gets off on the differences Jordan draws between them, and on the contrast those differences create in the face of an enemy that operates like a hive mind.
Even before we get to the root of the loss — and residual lust — that Smoke shares with a local Hoodoo conjurer named Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), it’s clear he moves with a heaviness that Stack has never had to carry. He’s the older brother; by a minute, but for a lifetime. Stack, meanwhile, is all about money and the power that it affords. Yet that hunger for power belies the tenderness of its purpose, both put on display by virtue of Stack’s forbidden romance with a white-presenting spitfire who looks like Scarlett O’Hara and talks like a rabid sailor (Hailee Steinfeld, whose maternal grandfather was also half-Black, delivers Mary’s lines with enough relish to cover every hot dog in New York for an entire summer). In spite of how far they’ve gone in this world, neither twin is truly free, and because of how far they’ve gone in this world, both know they never will be.
That’s all the more reason for Smoke and Stack to open the Juke, and allow their community to have a sip of freedom for a few hours each night. But those pesky fucking vampires are always messing shit up and demanding to be let inside for a drink of their own. At first, they just look like a weird folk trio who got lost on their way to a Coen brothers movie (Jack O’Connell is the glimmering Remmick, with Lola Kirke and Peter Dreimanis as the KKK couple he turns). But then, there’s the glowing red eyes and the pointy teeth and the screaming. Most of all, there are the lies that they spread like truths, even and especially among themselves; the promise of living forever as one happy family and never hurting again.
Those lies allow “Sinners” to indulge in some classic moments of bodysnatcher-like paranoia. That promise — which Remmick offers to people regardless of their skin color — pushes Coogler’s script to reach beyond the black-and-white metaphor that vampirism would seem to offer the Jim Crow South in favor of a messier but more far-reaching commentary on the temptation that turns decent souls into bloodsuckers. People will do anything to spare themselves and their loved ones from suffering, and feasting on their fellow man — be it from their necks or their hearts — historically allows them to feel as if they’re living above the hurt they’re so afraid to feel for themselves. Racism is evergreen, but fascism is too, and “Sinners” is often fascinating for how it braids those two forces together into a slipstream of eternal damnation.
“Sinners” almost makes surrendering to the darkness and joining the vampires seem like fun, an interesting choice that nevertheless conflicts with Coogler’s obligation to make the vampires seem frightening. Which, sadly, they are not. Tense and totally engaging as it is to watch the bloodsuckers prepare to lay siege to the Juke (the siege itself is less exciting), the only thing scary about “Sinners” is the abstract notion of losing someone — or yourself — to the devil’s embrace. At least there’s a lot of blood, and all of it is the drippy orange-brown stuff that gorehounds have come to see as a mark of integrity rather than the bright red digital garbage that looks all too gross for a very different reason.
That “Sinners” remains such an absolute ripper in spite of its uninspired villains is owed to how Coogler makes being a human seem even more fun, and so much of that is owed to the film’s thundering musicality. This isn’t the first time that a Ludwig Göransson score has been inextricable from the texture of a Ryan Coogler movie, but “Sinners” opens with someone talking about a kind of music “so pure it can pierce the veil between life and death, past and future” (a heavy gauntlet to drop at your composer’s feet!), and then proceeds to show us exactly what that sounds like. Twangy bass lines thick enough to saw down a redwood tree are shredded with shivers of electric guitar to create a blues sound that cuts a hole straight through the decades.
Things get even more heated when the characters burst into a series of sweltering original songs at the Juke, creating an orgiastic — even religious — fever strong enough to rip the space-time continuum apart at the seams. A shoot-the-moon sequence in a film that isn’t afraid to take some mighty big swings (even during the end credits), Coogler’s exhilarating centerpiece literalizes the idea that music can serve as a living conduit for all the pain and the pleasure that hold a people together over the centuries. In moments like that, “Sinners” affirms that the movies are still capable of growing into the same power.
Grade: B+
Warner Bros. will release “Sinners” in theaters on Friday, April 18.
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