Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, Delroy Lindo
Screenplay: Ryan Coogler
137 mins. Rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content and language.

For the past decade, Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) has spent much of his time in the world of franchise filmmaking, something that has aided him with his newest feature, an original southern gothic vampire film that has some of the most ambitious storytelling of his career. You can see a number of techniques experimented with in previous works perfected here with another tale of legends and myth utilized to tell real human stories. Sinners succeeds as both an exciting genre tale and an energizing meditation on spirituality in art and the importance of creation, especially in times of great fear.

The year is 1932, and twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in a dual role) have returned home with a ton of cash, ready to stake their claim by opening up a juke joint, in hopes of getting a fresh start. They acquire an old mill for the location and gather staff in order to open up business tonight, but they aren’t expecting an ancient and powerful evil force from attending the opening festivities, hoping to slaughter every one of them.

The first hour of Sinners is all stage-setting, as Coogler cleverly puts his chess pieces in place, but the entire chess board is doomed; the pieces just don’t know it yet. While this first-half is light on horror elements, it is never boring. Hell, I could watch an entire film with just setting up the juke joint and it would be just as engaging and entertaining. The horror elements are just the frosting for this cake, and Coogler chooses to use the ending of the film as a framing device, with all the events being a flashback to one day prior, which adds a layer of impending doom to the proceedings. This is, in fact, how we are introduced to the heart and soul of the film, Sammie (Miles Caton), cousin to Smoke and Stack and also known as Preacher Boy. When Sammie sees his father before heading out for the night, the preacher tells him, “You keep dancing with the devil, one day he’s going to follow you home.” The line is chilling and delivered with the right amount of intensity to drive home the threat encircling these characters.

Coogler doesn’t just contain his supernatural elements on the creatures lying in wait, but also in how he approaches the blues music that permeates the entirety of Sinners. He narratively showcases the music as a religion, oftentimes the rhythmic movement caused by it as an involuntary response. The sequence where Sammie finally gets a chance to perform will go down as one of the best scenes in any movie of the past decade, and certainly the best filmmaking in Ryan Coogler’s career thus far. I won’t get much further into it than that, but the music is very much a god in the film in opposition to the devilish performance of Jack O’Connell (Ferrari) as Remmick.

Michael B. Jordan is saddled with a lot of screen time as he plays both twins, sometimes sharing a shot (another notion that I’m certain Ryan Coogler decided upon following his time with big-budget MCU filmmaking), and he’s excellent as both Smoke and Stack. Giving each brother mannerisms of their own to differentiate (even something as simple as how they exit their car), it is very rare that it ever becomes difficult to figure out who is who. There’s only one sequence, where the editing layers two different conversations, one between Smoke and Sammie and the other between Stack and former flame Mary (Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen), where I had a little difficulty as the cinematography is very similar between both conversations, which is more an editing issue than a performance one. That being said, Jordan has crafted two complete characters here, and both are electrifying. The aforementioned Caton, alongside Wunmi Mosaku (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) as Smoke’s wife, Annie, and Delroy Lindo (Up) as the inebriated musician Delta Slim all deserve praise as well.

Ryan Coogler has crafted a truly original genre blockbuster, the kind of film that we don’t often get to see anymore (these types of budgets are usually reserved only for franchise filmmaking), so I don’t want to hear about how Hollywood doesn’t have anything original anymore with films like Sinners that deserve to be seen. As with most movies these days, it’s perhaps fifteen minutes too long, but I’m stoked to see this one again and again. It’s got a terrific ensemble cast and embraces the genre more than I expected, and it’s also got some of the most electrifying music of the year. Sinners is a small story on an epic scale, and I can’t wait to see what genre Coogler decides to conquer next.

4.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, click here.