Review: “Sinners”

Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1932. The signs that this is the Jim Crow-era South perpetually exist on the periphery of the lives of the town’s Black residents: in the fields flecked with white cotton as far as the eye can see, where Black sharecroppers labor day in and day out, and in Hogwood (David Maldonado), the white landowner from whom twins Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan in a dual role) purchase a saw mill and the surrounding land under not-so-thinly-veiled threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan. Writer and director Ryan Coogler isn’t particularly interested in centering oppression in his genre-bending horror film Sinners, however. When Stack and his younger, guitar prodigy cousin Sammie, nicknamed Preacher Boy (Miles Canton, in his film debut) go to town, all of its visible residents are Black, with the exception of Chinese shopkeepers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo (Yao). The brothers purchased the saw mill with the intention of transforming it into Club Juke, a hopping spot for Black people to enjoy good music, good liquor, and good company after a long day working in the fields. It’s the opening night of Club Juke that the backdrop of Sinners is almost entirely set against, and it’s that celebratory mood that permeates the film even when its ambitious swings don’t always land.

Coogler drops dribbles of information about his characters throughout the narrative, allowing the emotive performances of his cast to speak for themselves. We know, for instance, from snippets of dialogue that Smoke and Stack are World War I veterans, and that they’ve arrived in Mississippi after getting in some hot water in Chicago (involving some undisclosed work for Al Capone, no less). We know that Stack is dodging a relationship with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a family friend who is one-eighth Black but passes for white. We know that Smoke and his wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) are estranged, her adherence to occult practices having been unable to save the life of their infant child. And we know that Sammie’s musical talent is so transcendent, it attracts the attention of Remmick, an Irish immigrant-turned-vampire who turns and accumulates followers as he moves through the area (some of the elements, like the Choctaw vampire hunters pursuing Remmick, are glossed over but would make for incredibly compelling stories on their own). Across the board, the ensemble is colorful and riveting: Jordan, who has been a major player in every one of Coogler’s feature films— his muse, if you will), spends much of the film playing opposite himself, a feat he accomplishes with believable naturalism, although his performance isn’t varied enough to make the twins feel like two distinct characters. Some of the cast— Mosaku, Steinfeld, and Jayme Lawson, who plays singer and Sammie’s love interest Grace, for one— are a tad underutilized but punch up every scene they’re in with the sheer force of their personalities, all steadfast, loving, and smart. Canton, meanwhile, centers the story with his beguiling concoction of innocence, talent, moxie, and resourcefulness, even when it feels like he isn’t pulling from the same emotional depths as the rest of the cast.

But music is arguably an even more important character in Sinners than the people who populate it. Coogler’s regular composer Ludwig Göransson worked on the blues-infused score, which culls from traditional Black Southern music and utilizes numerous blues musicians. But the soundtrack is ultimately as layered and untraditional as the film it accents, a blues guitar one second being joined by a metal guitar the next, infusing the movie with a unique texture that bridges the past to the future. It’s doubly appropriate that Sinners’ two halves— historical character drama gradually morphing into vampiric horror— are joined by one wildly exciting music number, in which Sammie’s performance at Club Juke, music that’s said to be “so pure it can pierce the veil between life and death, past and future,” literally does that, with traditional African dancers, metal guitarists, and modern DJs materializing among the club’s reveler’s, the camera tracking amongst the dancers in a way that emphasizes the joy of bodies in motion.

It’s sequences like that, when considered in conjunction with the rest of the film, that make Sinners feel more like an experimental exercise than a cohesive work. That isn’t a bad thing. Sinners marks Coogler’s first major original movie since his 2013 feature debut, the indie drama Fruitvale Station, and it’s a beguiling glimpse into what kind of filmmaker he is outside of the Marvel and Creed universes: someone who still prioritizes centering the Black experience, but pushing the boundaries of what that looks like, specifically for a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. Do the horror elements mesh well with the rest of the film? No, not really. Sinners takes its time building to them, and while the final third of the film is gory, it lacks a real visceral nature and a focus on the physical form that the music numbers possess. The tone, direction, and production design skews more toward generic action than Southern gothic terror, while the climax’s final punctuation mark— a shoot-out involving Smoke— feels more like a tacked-on crowd-pleaser than an essential piece of the story. And Remmick’s intentions in stalking the Club Juke— he promises the Black characters not only eternal life, but a life free from racism— easily could have been expanded on. The film grasps at some sort of statement involving the collision of all these minority groups in a time and place dominated by white Americans and reconciliation and atonement for past sins, but its more a vague gesture toward an idea rather an a definitive remark, and that causes the story to feel rather more confused than it ought to. Regardless, Sinners is the sort of stimulating project that only comes along every so often, one whose missteps are as fascinating to experience as its hits, and one that— despite its dark turns— navigates Black spaces with warmth and love.

Sinners is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 137 minutes. Rated R.