“Sinners” (2025) is Ryan Coogler’s most recent and moving masterpiece that makes a vampire movie feel like an epic. Set in Clarksdale, Mississippi on October 16, 1932, twins, Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in both roles), have survived against the odds and decide to return to the Jim Crow South to start a juke joint with their cousin Samuel Moore (Miles Caton), nicknamed Preacher Boy, Sam and Sammie, who is a talented singer and guitar player. Their cousin defies his father’s warning about attracting the devil instead of serving the Lord. Remmick (Jack O’Connell) wants to join in the fun, but the problem is that he is a vampire, and he wants Sammie. Will Samuel choose the right path? Stay until the lights are back up.
Sam is the main character though “Sinners” is best described as a rich ensemble piece filled with multidimensional supporting characters. If you are familiar with the Bible, Samuel’s name is significant. The film is a struggle for Sam’s soul, but also for the future of the United States and specifically communities of color. Sam’s path is the only imperfect way to freedom, and he is a supernatural figure for good. His only power is music, which people try to use for their own agenda. The challenge is to find his own way and show how tools that are considered evil because of stigma or the history of the instrument’s owner can also be lifesaving. By the end of the movie, you will be drowning in tears and gasping from his journey.
Sam is the son of a preacher, Jedidiah (Saul Williams), who believes that his son cannot serve God and play the guitar. His cousin, Smoke, the protector and more business-minded of the twins, agrees and is used to getting his way with force, “I know plenty musicians, but I never met a happy one.” Music has power as a time portal and as a liminal, ephemeral space of freedom and fellowship. Coogler’s most moving scenes visualize how music can transport us and is a universal language. Even though the movie is not classified as such, it may be the best musical of the twenty-first century and is filled with the blues. Think of all the Shug Avery songs from “The Color Purple” (1985) except way more and from a multitude of performers like Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), who also provides comedic relief, Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a potential love interest for Sam and others.
When Remmick appears, he is Sam’s nightmare come to life because Sam wonders if his father’s warnings were right. Cue Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), the juke joint cook who has a history with Smoke and practices hoodoo. Mosaku is so badass and gorgeous that she needs to be in every movie forever. Annie also narrates parts of “Sinners” to explain that vampires are not the devil. It is just a state of existence that keeps people trapped in a narrative of condemnation and hate and in exile from their deceased loved ones, which is not classified as heaven though another level of existence. Delta Slim also encourages Sam because he has been playing the blues his whole life and never attracted the devil.
If “Sinners” is amazing, it is because nothing is a simple binary. Setting the film in a time where freedom feels possible but elusive, the story displays different paths to obtain freedom. There are various forms of slavery. Smoke wants money because he equates it with power; thus, his desire to solve everything by force and cash, but he believes that he is trapped in being bad because of his father’s legacy—the sins of the father. He is a hero in the movie. The brothers think that the American dream comes in the traditional capitalist way, but Stack also recognizes that freedom comes through enjoying life. There is a Wild West gunslinger vibe to them even though it is set in the South. He cannot enjoy the life in the way that he wants because of segregation, which keeps him apart from Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a white passing woman who in her final on screen appearance looks like Debi Mazar. There is a constant refrain that the KKK does not exist (post-racial, anyone), but it is a lie. Delta Slim recollects stories of a friend who becomes financially successful only for systematic oppression to murder his friend to take his earnings without any legal consequences. So, money is not power if you are Black because it cannot protect people from jealousy and thievery. Delta Slim chooses oblivion: spend all your money and stay drunk. Another option is to be good: sharecropping every day and attend church on your one free day, but it is a life of creative restriction, which means self-imposed exile from your ancestors and a severed connection to your descendants. It is the erasure of culture, eternal love and self, a joyless existence.
When Remmick appears, he feels like a supernatural sinister offshoot of the lying white supremacists, but he is an alternative offering a different vision of freedom. Like the church offering freedom in heaven after dying, Remmick offers freedom in death, a post racial fellowship. He likely comes from the fourth century, a time of oppression through colonizing and comes from a culture that has always felt a historical kinship to Black culture throughout the diaspora. He also values music but is an anti-Christ figure who appropriates people without their consent, through deception and using brutality. He is like a supernatural Jim Jones, Remmick got twisted into evil because of colonialism and replicates the evil done unto him instead of rejecting it.
Coogler movies are always special because while other movies hem and haw over whether people of color existed in the past or will in the future, Coogler lets everyone in for the ride: Choctaw Indians and Chinese Americans. In the sequence where Samuel opens the time portal, it was coincidentally reminiscent of what an artist accomplished in his documentary “Assembly” (2025) with the linking of different cultures to its African origins. Also it gave filmgoers a chance to see how different cultures and religions would fight vampires, and it seems as if crosses were ineffective.
If you do not care about the deeper meaning behind “Sinners,” it is an amazing action/horror movie. The vampires do not sparkle and are all teeth and claws: think “30 Days of Night” (2007) and “Fright Night” (1985). There are also some old characteristics such as needing an invitation to cross a threshold. Their eyes have a tapetum lucidum like cats, a reflective layer, to see better at night, which has appeared in films like “Shadow of the Vampire” (2000), “Let the Right One In” (2008) and “Daybreakers” (2009). They are like earlier vampires where the bite is sufficient to turn people, but the time of infection to transformation is closer to a zombie bite. The newest sign is drooling when hungry and near food. They lay out all the rules and signs so listing an exhaustive list here would ruin the fun. If you found “Django Unchained” (2012) disappointing in its lack of imagination, this movie will give you the vengeance that you want.
Though Coogler may have made films that are not for everyone, Coogler has never made a bad film, but who does not love a vampire movie or a period piece? By the end of “Sinners,” I was crying because it was so awe-inspiring and majestic. I want to go back to the theater and spend a day watching every showing then come back and see it with subtitles until it is encoded in my DNA. Also it is a wonderful way to introduce the latest era of Black dandyism to moviegoers.
Side note: the site will remain nameless, and it has multiple reviewers, but it rated “Sinners” lower than “A Working Man” (2025) and at the same level as “A Minecraft Movie” (2025). While art is subjective, and movies are a hybrid of commercial and creativity, if a site is leading to this result, just disclose how much you are getting paid to shill for these movies. It is deeply unserious criticism that screams pay to play.
