Give it to writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther) for coming at Sinners, his first horror feature, with the intentionality of a PhD student with something to prove. There’s no shortage of existing lazy or derivative vampire movies that he could have easily bested with modest effort. Instead, Coogler cracked the history books, collected his A-list family of collaborators, including composer Ludwig Göransson, production designer Hannah Beachler, director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, costume designer Ruth E. Carter and ever-trusted leading man Michael B. Jordan, to cinematically (with a capital C) transport the audience to a 1930’s Jim Crow Mississippi ripe for all kinds of delicious trouble.
Coogler’s Sinners screenplay is original but it most certainly carries the baton for what Misha Green explored in her mashup of horror, the supernatural and Black oppression in her HBO series, Lovecraft Country (2020). Although that series was ultimately too broad with its ambitions, Coogler wisely stays hyper-focused on just two monsters – the vampire and bigoted Whites who wear hoods. Coogler weaves vampiric metaphors into the societal oppression of the Old South and asks the audience to consider, which is worse?
Sinners is told through the world-weary eyes of twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (a finely-tuned dual performance by Jordan), who return home to Mississippi after first surviving WWI, and then the organized crime gangs of Chicago. Preferring to deal with the “devils” they know back in their home turf, they return with confidence, ruthless skills they aren’t afraid to unleash — be they White or Black — and a plan to open a juke joint in the former lumber mill they buy with cash on the outskirts of town. It’s meant to be a place of joy and safety for their community, and they want an immediate grand opening that very night.
Enlisting the help of their younger cousin Preacherboy Sammie (Miles Caton) to collect a few local collaborators from around the area, the twins collect the ensemble cast in a purposeful ramble that maps for the audience the locations of their old haunts, from lushly shot cotton fields to a bustling train station and through the segregated businesses in town. Arkapaw and Coogler envelop the audience into this corner of the world with propulsive oners, and a well-balanced mix of gorgeous wide-screen framing and intimate character moments. By the time the twins have enlisted the help of ornery musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), beefy bouncer Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller), Smoke’s ex-wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) and the resourceful local grocers Bo (Yao) and Grace Chow (Li Jun Li), the audience is well-invested in the people and geography of this town.
And then the music gets more expansive as Slim, local singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) and Sammie, who plays a mean guitar and sings like a blues elder, share their prodigious gifts with the clientele who arrive around sunset. That includes Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the local girl who grew up alongside the twins and passes for White. She and Stack have a lot of unresolved business to confront as the night unfolds.
Göransson and Coogler use banjos, percussion and wailing slide guitars to underscore the passionate dance between the brothers, friends and lovers who pack the dance floor and side rooms. Original songs, like the seductive “Pale, Pale Moon,” the ominous “Pick Poor Robin Clean” and the rollicking “Magic What We Do,” which brilliantly explodes in a rhythmic celebration of musical excellence by diverse cultures, past and future, allow Coogler to create an aural tapestry that both grounds the film and exalts the outsized talent created by their culture.