“SINNERS” (2025, 137 min., directed by Ryan Coogler)
“Sinners,” the new vampire movie from “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, is a two-toned triumph. One on hand, the film is a red-hot, red-eyed, red-blooded action-horror flick. It’s also a deeply thoughtful, thoroughly soulful celebration of the blues: Ludwig Göransson has crafted a musical score for the ages. There are just as many musical showcases as action set pieces in “Sinners,” and the two make for a beautiful harmony.
Michael B. Jordan, pulling double-duty at the center of “Sinners,” embodies the film’s colorful duality as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack. That’s literal, as far as the costuming goes – “Sinners” makes telling the twins apart as easy as possible by giving Stack a red hat and Smoke a blue one – but Jordan goes deeper than that. His performances as Smoke and Stack are fantastic, largely because they’re entirely different.
Stack is the ambassador of red in “Sinners,” a fast-talking, hot-tempered charmer. Jordan lets his movie star charisma soar through Stack’s character, lighting his face up in joy or fury as a scene demands. Stack is the film’s protagonist on the red, action-heavy side of “Sinners.” He’s an active character, bad with money and quick to make a deal, but great with people.
Jordan’s demeanor completely flips in his portrayal of the other twin. Smoke is the “Sinners” embodiment of blue. He’s quieter, steelier and more soulful than his brother, with a better head for business and consequences. Jordan plays Smoke as simultaneously violent and vulnerable, though both qualities are suppressed under a mask of impenetrable cool.
The film begins with the brothers’ return to the Mississippi Delta from Chicago in the early 1930s. After attempting to make it big in the Windy City, the twins have returned to their hometown loaded up with contraband and dreams of opening a blues music juke joint.
For their juke joint staff, the twins recruit the film’s primary cast of characters: Miles Caton as “Preacher Boy” Sammie, their musically-gifted younger cousin, Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim, an alcoholic blues musician, Omar Benson Miller as Cornbread, a fieldworker-turned-bouncer, Wunmi Mosaku as Annie, Smoke’s estranged wife, Li Jun Li and Yao as shopkeepers and suppliers Grace and Bo Chow and Jayme Lawson as Pearline, blues singer and Sammie’s love interest.
The other players involved are Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, a passing white woman and Stack’s ex-girlfriend, and Jack O’Connell as Remmick, an Irish vampire and the villain of the piece.
That’s a lot of characters. The fact the film doesn’t feel overloaded as a result is a testament to Coogler’s strength as a writer. Each of his characters are complex and fleshed-out, and the world around them feels whole, largely due to the patient set-up in the film’s first act. Thanks to Coogler’s deft scripting, by the time the vampires appear and the band gets together, there are actual stakes and emotions tied to the death, sex and musical climaxes to come.
Coogler is also great with inventing mythology. In “Sinners,” he skillfully merges vampire canon with folklore from the African diaspora. The three characters – and performers – with the strongest results from that unique blend are Sammie, Annie and Remmick.
The fact I’ve made it this far into a “Sinners” review with hardly a mention of Miles Caton is a sin itself. Somehow, “Sinners” is Caton’s screen debut. He is extraordinary.
Despite the film’s central focus on Jordan and his two characters, Sammie is the ultimate protagonist of “Sinners.” He is the son of a music-denouncing preacher, which is unfortunate, as Sammie has a rare gift for blues music. His deep, sonorous voice and guitar abilities enrapture his surroundings wherever he goes, including Coogler’s camera. There are several sequences in the film dedicated to nothing more than letting Caton sing.
If Stack and Smoke are red and blue, Sammie is a royal purple. Caton fuses heart and soul into a magisterial performance. One of his scenes at the center of “Sinners” in the conversation for greatest cinematic moments of the decade.
Wunmi Mosaku is another less familiar name turned into a wonderful discovery. Mosaku gives a deeply affecting performance as Annie. It’s revealed early on in the film that Annie and Smoke lost a baby, a tragedy which has driven Smoke further into himself and sent Annie further out. In Mosaku’s hands, Annie is an empathy machine. She’s also a practitioner of Hoodoo, a key resource in the movie’s vampire onslaught.
In fact, Annie is a sort of Hoodoo van Helsing. In the film’s vampire-killing-training-montage – maybe my favorite cinematic trope – Annie is a fount of knowledge about stakes, garlic and other anti-vampire folklore. She initially figures the vampires are haints, or malevolent spirits in the Hoodoo tradition, and had given Smoke a mojo bag, or prayer pouch, Hoodoo elements that gave “Sinners” a texture unlike any vampire movie I’ve seen before.
The vampire Remmick, played by a terrifying Jack O’Connell, was another classic vampire archetype which felt fresh in “Sinners.” Yes, Remmick craves blood, gets hurt by the sun, must be invited indoors, has a garlic allergic and is susceptible to stakes to the heart. However, Remmick is also made an embodiment of Irish folk music and cultural subsummation.
When Remmick turns someone into a vampire, they become part of a hive mind. In an interesting flourish, the vampire has a great affection for music, forcing his vampire horde into playing backing band for his Irish jigs.
The Irish music sequences are amusing and alluring, but they also make for a cunning, clever metaphor. When Remmick turns Black blues musicians into mere puppets for his music, Coogler is staring directly down the barrel of music history. There is a long lineage of Black music being stolen, appropriated or covered up by cultural vampires. “Sinners” makes an effective use of that history by literalizing it.
There is so much else to recommend in “Sinners.” Hailee Steinfeld is great. The blood is disgustingly goopy. The action sequences really work. There are minor quibbles you might walk away with – I’m not crazy about the film’s extended finale, for instance – but they all pale in comparison with Coogler’s colossal accomplishment like a vampire coven wiped out by the rising sun.
After the successes of “Fruitvale Station,” “Creed,” and “Black Panther,” Coogler might be the most exciting blockbuster filmmaker in the biz. His latest success might be called “Sinners,” but for fans of exciting, compelling, envelope-pushing cinema, watching it feels like heaven.
Rating: 5/5
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