Sinners Review: Ryan Coogler's Magnum Opus Bites Deep Into America’s Southern History

Sinners Bites Deep Into America’s Southern History

By Dylan Barbee

Courtesy of @sinnersmovie on Instagram

Release Date: April 18th, 2025

I had rarely heard or seen anything about Ryan Coogler and Micheal B. Jordan’s newest collaborative film Sinners before it crept into the spotlight with high praise. The marketing for the film seemed very brief, not really revealing anything about the plot which I now know was purposeful.

 

Sinners is a striking period piece that immerses viewers into America’s Jim Crow South, exploring the region’s cultural roots through its music. Departing from Coogler’s previous approach on films like Black Panther and Creed, this original story quickly takes a bold gothic horror twist, using vampires as a haunting metaphor on cultural assimilation and the erasure of Black heritage.

 

The film starts with gangster twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Micheal B. Jordan) returning home to Mississippi from Chicago to open a juke joint to give back to the community that raised them. Their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) is a young and talented blues musician whose father is a priest (Saul Williams) and claims that the genre is the devil’s music. “You keep dancing with the devil…one day he’s gonna follow you home,” the priest tells his son at the beginning of the film.

 

One might not expect this to be a horror movie at first as the first half of Sinners consist of Smoke, Stack and Sammie spreading the word around town about their new juke joint opening that night. Micheal B. Jordan has his best performance yet in this film successfully playing two twin brothers that are community leaders. The audience can easily differentiate each twin from one another as Smoke is stoic and threatening while Stack is reckless but charming. 

 

Once the day hits dusk, we soon see this segregated town filled with faithful and religious people looking for ways to experience transcendence at Smoke and Stack’s opening night party. A risky but impactful scene that Coogler chooses to include showed the evolution of black music from blues to modern day hip-hop while Sammie impressively sang a remixed blues song. I could see how some audiences could find this scene corny as it is unexpected and goes against the rest of the film’s pacing, but I liked how it masterfully displayed the importance of music and is indicative of how the art brings people together. I genuinely think it is one of the most original scenes I’ve seen in a film and will go down as Coogler’s magnum opus.

 

The vampire twist was also unexpected but just as meaningful when discussing real world topics and cultural history. The villain Remmick (Jack O’Connell) is complex as his Irish heritage has been taken from him by white Europeans just like African Americans. Although Remmick is a character you feel sympathy towards as he feels sympathetic for the victims of the Jim Crow laws, him and his cult of vampires represent imperialism and cultural assimilation as they are all allured by the juke joint’s presence of black music, asking for permission before invading into their safe space; a common vampire tactic in the cult followed genre. 

 

The film consists of great performances from actors like Delroy Lindo who plays an alcoholic blues musician, Jayme Lawson who plays a woman that has an affair with Sammie and Hailee Steinfeld who plays an ex-lover of Stack. Sinners is a memorable watching experience that contains many genres and impressively displays the duality between religion and personal temptation through its complex characters. 

 

Although Sinners drags out with what felt like four different endings, this extremely bold and original vampire story of sex, violence and power carries momentum throughout with each scene outshining the last. It sinks its fangs into the American South and the vampire gothic horror genre through powerful allegory about the region’s music and way of life. Coogler’s vision lingers with you after leaving the theater making it his best film yet. 

 

Rating: 8.5/10