Sinners

 

This review may contain spoilers!

Sinners is a historical horror feature following twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who attempt to open a Juke Joint in their hometown. However, Their opening night is halted when a vampiric force arrives to threaten the partygoers.

Ryan Coogler has been a real champion for Black art and excellence across his entire career, but this is a very real culmination in his efforts. Coogler gives his best original idea yet in this arresting story about two brothers who just want to return home and redefine themselves. They don't want to be seen as criminal anymore, but rather through their own work and hustling they wants to be business owners, they want to build up this massive juke joint and create a space for Black people. In this joint they pull together the best local talent they have, uplifting Black music and art in the space too. This first half of the feature is an exemplary story in and of itself. We are shown a Black America that still is in the throes of Jim Crow law, where the memory of slavery is not so very distant. At the same time, it is a story of Black culture expressing itself, shaping identity both within its roots and what it hopes to become. The community established through the cast of this film really impactfully tells this story and setting very well. Even the tilt into the fantastical horror elements, where vampires enter the picture, tells us a lot about these themes woven by Coogler. Here we see a white vampire (admittedly an Irishman who also would have been ostracized at the time) with intention of taking the player at the heart of the music. It's a very interesting discussion on invasion of Black space, business and art. Coogler points the finger and really levels the conversation around Black creativity or entrepreurship being stolen, assimilated or copied by white people.

This is a real visual spectacle, an absolute feast for the senses. Ryan Coogler makes the South of the 1930s feel expansive, lining the roads with sweeping cotton fields and broad town roads begging for a shoot out. Yet, he often promises artistic cinematography, just look at moments like the wheeling flames as our cast dances in a dream-like sequence paired against the vampires hypnotically dancing to an Irish folk song later. By this measure, I also have to rave about the score and soundtrack in equal measure here. Putting actors who can really sing was right at the forefront of the vision and Ludwig Göransson is one of the greatest film composers living at present. The soulful sound of this film paired with complete reverence for the Blues marks one of the best cinematic sounds of the year.

Miles Caton, who played Sammie Moore, is absolutely on fire in his first major breakout role; Caton's vocals are next level and he also plays to the emotional crossroads his role finds himself upon very well. Saul Williams, who played Jedidiah, holds so much gravitas as the pastor in the feature; Williams and Caton really challenge one another well as a father/son duo. Michael B. Jordan, who played Smoke and Stack, leads this movie with great competence; as Smoke Jordan is a firm hand leader type while he lets all of his charismas flow as Stack. Yao and Li Jun Li, who played Bo Chow and Grace Chow respectively, are really fast moving business-focused characters; Li in particular stands out with her negotiating tactics and combative nergy in the face of the vampire threat. Hailee Steinfeld, who played Mary, is a firecracker in this; Steinfeld has a remarkably sharp tongue and delivery that can only ever really be matched by Jordan. Wunmi Mosaku, who played Annie, is this very serence and wise figure with quite a spiritual connection to the world; Mosaku plays the role with great confidence that makes you believe in the knowledge her character wields.

However, the best performance came from Delroy Lindo, who played Delta Slim. I thoroughly enjoy Lindo as a performer, particularly at this point in his career. When we first meet the character of Slim we get this wild and drunken entertainer, someone who plays loosely to his code and guards his patch even fiercer. Lindo gives the role a bit of lived history, the man is carrying around years of living and you feel the weight of that. At the same time, Slim is someone who loses himself in the sensation of playing music, Blues is in his veins and you feel that sincerity through the performance. I enjoyed seeing Lindo lock horns with other performers, or share a laugh with them or even fearfully tiptoe around them in the final act. What makes Lindo such a good performer is that he gives everything to a character, I could not tell you where Slim ends and Lindo begins, and that's on being a master of the craft.

I think Sinners is an excellent film at the worst of times, but it does full victim to Coogler's general weakness. He likes to play in a blockbuster sized sandpit, where the film is buffed up through a big cast or the genre. For Sinners the cast component is only a good thing, but I found the genre angle to be a bit pulpy. Obviously vampires serve the metaphor well enough, but the way this film tilts into a vampire horror is quite abrupt and doesn't ever quite click into place super well. The film is filled with little 'vision board' moments like this that serve the theme but look a bit tacky at times. A music sequence with modern music elements crammed in, vampires playing instruments as a disguise to get in, a very sluggishly paced final action sequence and an excessive amount of scenes with our characters just chatting it up with the vampire antagonists at the door. The threat doesn't feel as big as it should, and there are some moments where the tilt into horror just feels performative to get audiences into theatres. Even the ending, with Stack and Mary scoping out Sammie at a 90s Blues joint or watching Smoke gun down the Klan to really ram what the movie is selling home makes it all wrap up on an off beat.

I also find Coogler's movies tend to be letdown by simple or downright bad special effects. Sinners gives us two Michael B. Jordan's which isn't an effect that is particularly hard by modern standards, they were pulling that move with doubling last century. But the ugly fire on water effect that sees the demise of our main vampire antagonist was another poor mark against a rather poor ending.

Jack O'Connell, who played Remmick, just feels a bit paper thin to be the main antagonist of the feature; once you remove the singing and the creature make-up the vampires just don't have all that much to them. David Maldonado, who played Hogwood, gives the same generic older racist antagonist we've been seeing for a couple of decades now; there is nothing unique in this caricature Klansman performance.  Jayme Lawson, who played Pearline, is really just here so that the Sammie character has a love interest; I really didn't feel much of Lawson's acting resulted in a feeling of chemistry between her and Caton. Omar Benson Miller, who played Cornbread, is a performer without a lot of range to give; Miller feels like he's there to serve as a bit of comedy before things get dark but he doesn't really deliver on that. Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke, who played Bert and Joan respectively, only served to lower my impressions of the vampire antagonists; these roles just felt goofy in how they played their scenes once turned. Buddy Guy, who played Old Sammie, presented one of the most hollow feeling endings to the film; Guy just plucked at a guitar and fed this really odd gaudy ending.

Celebrating the significance of Black music, creativity and business through the guise of a Western vampire horror might just be one of Ryan Coogler's wildest ideas yet. I would give Sinners a 7.5/10.