Sinners – Review

Ryan Coogler has built a career on refusing to stay in one place. His films carry a restless energy, a sense of being driven not just by story, but by the urgency behind it. Fruitvale Station (2013) marked his arrival with an unflinching portrait of injustice that still reverberates and he followed that with 2015’s Creed, a revitalisation of the Rocky (1976 – present) franchise that breathed new emotional weight into familiar beats, then pushed further with Black Panther (2018), a rare Marvel film that felt authored – poised at the intersection of blockbuster spectacle and cultural reclamation. Even its sequel, shaped by the grief of Chadwick Boseman’s (21 Bridges) death, found room for tenderness and mourning within the confines of a studio mandate. His work is physical, muscular, often furious, but never aimless.

Which makes Sinners all the more arresting. His first wholly original feature, not drawn from an existing intellectual property, biography or ripped from the headlines, doesn’t just step outside his previous filmography, but it also burns the template that most directors work from. Set in the 1930s Jim Crow South and soaked in swamp heat, it’s a feverish cocktail of Southern Gothic horror, blues mythology, and vampire pulp. What starts as an atmospheric period piece begins to unspool into something far stranger, where supernatural threats blur with earthly horrors, and salvation might be found in a guitar lick or a stake through the heart. It’s audacious by design, leaning into contradictions – arthouse and grindhouse, sacred and profane, mournful and gleefully blood-soaked.

The story rewinds to the day before, but Coogler resists turning it into a typical ticking-clock setup. Instead, he lets the air grow thick with unease. A young man, battered and bloodied, stumbles into his father’s church, clutching a guitar like it’s the only thing tethering him to life. It’s a striking image, not just for its violence, but for the way it upends expectation. There’s no fanfare, no exposition dump. Just trauma, mid-sermon. The congregation turns. The pastor falters. And the boy, Sammie, played with raw immediacy by newcomer Miles Caton, stands at the centre of it all haunted, half-alive, and marked by something far older than any scar.

A voiceover traces the mythos of music as a portal, a force capable of summoning spirits across time and bloodlines. Coogler weaves together ancestral threads from West Africa, pre-colonial Ireland, and Choctaw traditions, hinting at a wider spiritual ecosystem that pulses beneath the soil of Clarksville, Mississippi. In this town, music doesn’t just stir the soul, but tears at the seams of reality. And Sammie’s voice, aching and otherworldly, might be more than just a gift. 

Prohibition-era ambition rolls into Clarksville in the form of two sharply dressed men with twin grins and a truck full of contraband. Smoke and Stack, identical cousins to Sammie and played in dual performance by Michael B. Jordan (Without Remorse, Creed), return to their Delta hometown with the swagger of men who’ve survived worse places. War-hardened and weathered by the violence of Chicago’s underworld, they arrive with a plan – to open a juke joint (Club Juke) in a derelict mill that will bring their brand of glitz, liquor, and danger to the backroads of the Jim Crow South.

Jordan, a frequent collaborator of Coogler’s, slips seamlessly into both roles, crafting two men who share blood but not quite temperament. Smoke carries himself with business-first restraint, favouring muted suits and tight control. Stack, on the other hand, is flashier with gold teeth, a burgundy fedora perched just so, his ambition loud and unrepentant. Both are dangerous. Both are charismatic. But Coogler and Jordan thread a tension between them that feels like a fuse waiting to burn down. Ruth E. Carter’s (Malcolm X, Oldboy) costuming becomes a form of storytelling, using fabric and colour to subtly define their contrasting personalities. In one scene, the twins occupy the same frame, speaking with shared purpose but standing just far enough apart to signal the inevitable rift.

While Smoke busies himself expanding their business empire, Stack leans into the lighter side of their return. Reuniting with cousin Sammie, he pulls him into the fold to headline the opening night of Club Juke. Sammie’s gift for guitar and aching vocals is exactly the kind of spirit the club needs (both literally and figuratively). Stack also coaxes Delta Slim, played with charming gruffness by Delroy Lindo (Get Shorty), out of semi-retirement, dangling an offer of bottomless Irish beer and one last great show. Coogler sketches this ensemble with swiftness and clarity, giving each a distinct role in the story while never losing sight of the broader tensions that hum beneath their interactions.

Sammie is spellbound by Pearline (Jayme Lawson, The Woman King), whose grace and unspoken grief hang around her like perfume. She’s stuck in a marriage that’s slowly crushing her, but her eyes light up the second Sammie picks up a guitar. Their connection is immediate, even if their future is anything but. Stack’s reunion with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld, Hawkeye) plays like a spark doused in gasoline. Her anger at his disappearance is palpable, but so is her desire. Their shared past, hidden under sharp words and lingering glances, feels like a fuse waiting to be relit. Steinfeld finds the balance between brittle and bold, turning Mary into a woman torn between propriety and passion.

But it’s Smoke’s relationship with Annie (Wunmi Mosaku, Lovecraft Country) that gives the film its most arresting emotional current. Annie’s a spiritual force, grounded in ancestral magic and unflinching intuition. The history between her and Smoke runs deeper than words can explain, and beneath the surface of their shared grief lies a deeper pull. Mosaku plays Annie with a rare duality, gentle in moments of vulnerability, but radiating authority whenever darkness stirs. 

Outside of a chilling prologue, Sinners holds back its supernatural turn for nearly 45 minutes, letting the audience settle into the world of its characters first. The early stretch plays closer to a Prohibition-set crime drama than a horror film, though the pacing might feel long to some. The sudden arrival of Remmick (Jack O’Connell, Unbroken), fronting a traveling Irish folk trio, marks the story’s turn. Their rendition of “The Rocky Road to Dublin” outside Club Juke is just off enough to feel like a warning. These aren’t wandering musicians but vampires, ageless and calculating, and they’ve come to feed.

Once the vampires breach the juke joint’s doors, Sinners becomes a siege movie soaked in blood and desperation. Remmick, all smiles and old-world charm at first, transforms into something genuinely terrifying, leading his trio in a spree that’s both feral and surgical. The sudden tonal shift may jolt viewers, but it’s earned. Coogler spends just enough time building emotional stakes, introducing the warmth of this tight-knit community, so when the horror arrives, it lands like a punch to the gut. Comparisons to From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) are inevitable, but Sinners isn’t built for pulp thrills. Where Rodriguez and Tarantino aimed for grindhouse fun, Coogler swings with heavier hands. Some of these characters won’t make it, and that loss cuts deep, not because they were cool or clever, but because Coogler made us care.

But it’s the music that stitches the film together, blood and all. Ludwig Göransson’s (Oppenheimer, Tenet) score melds African instrumentation with Delta blues and gospel grit, turning Sinners into something resembling a musical in disguise. Making his debut, Caton proves himself more than capable of carrying that load, both in intimate dramatic scenes and behind a microphone. His solo performance of “I Lied To You,” written for the film, threads the needle between sorrow and showmanship, cementing his presence as one of Sinners’ most affecting surprises. One standout montage (rich, almost overwhelming) maps the genre’s evolution, moving through time with reverberations that reach toward soul, funk, and hip-hop. It’s a bold, almost ecstatic detour that’s as important as any fight scene.

In a genre often content to leave corpses and quips in its wake, Sinners aims for something braver: it wants to mourn. It’s a vampire film that bleeds sincerity. A horror story that ends on a hymn. A juke joint requiem for all the things America tried to bury, and all the things that refuse to stay dead. 

Natalie

Natalie is a big fan of anything related to movies, TV shows, and anime — you name it. When she’s not reading or being a dedicated cinephile, she’s probably playing gacha and tabletop games, or daydreaming of Caleb from Love and Deepspace.