Since his debut with FRUITVALE STATION in 2013, it might be easy to lament Ryan Coogler’s move into the franchise filmmaking machine. However, to do so would overlook the creative and intelligent edges he brought to both CREED and BLACK PANTHER; films that were both much better than audiences had any right to expect. That being said, Coogler’s return to standalone material in SINNERS – with the sort of expansive canvas his blockbuster successes afford him, perhaps – allows him to approach this wild genre ride with a depth and verve the restrictions of the franchise juggernauts do not.
Michael B. Jordan – who has had a role in every single film Coogler has directed – leads as twin brothers ‘Smoke’ and ‘Stack’, who are returning to their hometown in Mississippi after serving in World War I and spending time in Chicago working for Al Capone. They plan to open a juke joint in a disused saw mill (bought from a racist white man), with the help of their younger cousin and talented musician, Sammie (Miles Caton). Several characters round out an ensemble who will attend the juke joint’s opening, but this intended refuge from the Jim Crow era environment is pierced by the ravenous presence of Remmick (Jack O’Connell), a vampire with a hunger best satisfied by the almost ethereal strength of Sammie’s music.
There is some irony in the fact that Coogler’s best avenue in years for originality is a vampire movie. The genre is almost a medium unto itself in this stage of cinema’s history, to the extent that NOSFERATU hit theatres in the year before and is the second remake of the prototypical vampire film from 1922. However, Coogler’s blend of traditional vampire lore and tropes with Southern imagery, themes of racism and colonialism, and a reverence for music is more intoxicating than any liquor sold in Club Juke.
“…Coogler’s blend of traditional vampire lore and tropes with Southern imagery, themes of racism and colonialism, and a reverence for music is more intoxicating than any liquor sold in Club Juke.”
SINNERS takes some time to arrive at its more fantastical elements, imbuing the narrative with the ingredients that will amplify its metaphors later. The characters navigate racism as a constant presence – such as when they purchase the saw mill – and will reflect on events that have brought them and the community to where they are now. Delroy Lindo’s drunken Delta states, “white folks [like] the blues just fine, they just don’t like the people who make it.” Stack’s ex-lover, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), is a mixed-race woman passing as white, and experiences a different environment than Stack as a result.
The mystical conceit interwoven with all this is the idea that music breaks the boundaries between different times and places, which draws the vampires in the story to our protagonists. An opening scrawl highlights that such magic offers healing power, but also attracts evil, before saying what the talented people alleged to have this ability were named in different communities, thereby linking it to populations of people deeply affected by the history of the United States of America and the colonisation of North America: West Africa, Ireland, and the Choctaw people. This association continues throughout the film. Smoke’s former partner, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), is a hoodoo healer, whose role – both narratively and in relation to the other characters – draws on African spiritual traditions, and Coogler takes time to establish other characters of Choctaw and immigrant backgrounds. The greatest metaphorical significance probably lies in the clash between the film’s Black heroes and white vampires.
“…vampirism acts as a sort of assimilating force – each new person ‘turned’ becoming part of a hive-mind of memories and experience – [and] belies the more insidious pleas of integration, with the safety of conformity flattening out individual and community history…”
Remmick is presented as Irish, and approaches the juke joint dancing a jig with traditional Celtic-sounding music (not to mention being played by an English actor of Irish heritage and surname in Jack O’Connell). His age implied in the film would indicate experience of suffering at the hands of Britain in Ireland. Therefore, the character’s presentation draws together the idea of colonial occupation and exploitation and its perpetual cycle impacting generations. The fact that his vampirism acts as a sort of assimilating force – each new person ‘turned’ becoming part of a hive-mind of memories and experience – belies the more insidious pleas of integration, with the safety of conformity flattening out individual and community history (and a side order of eternal damnation in this case). The Lord’s Prayer is spoken aloud in the film, but by the antagonists, not as a means of forgiveness or a bulwark against evil.
The suffering and pleasure of artistic expression reaching across time is brought to life most spectacularly in a sequence likely to be referenced in future years, where a vibrant and electrifying performance from Sammie transcends his immediate stage. Coogler uses a long single take to move his camera through different eras – many real, some imagined – of music and cultural expression. They are visualised as occupying the same space as Sammie, connecting the film’s themes of building a musical community in the face of oppression and building identities across time and generations. SINNERS positions intersectionality as a concept across eras – not just across varying communities of the same time.
“…as exhilarating as the action and music frequently are, seeing a film with this sense of scale grapple with bigger ideas is just as engaging.”
With so many strands to it, it’s not surprising that Coogler’s script isn’t perfect. The relationship between Smoke and Annie, who mourn the loss of a child, hits an emotional depth and power that the contrasting pairing of Stack and Mary simply cannot, even if their differing tenor speaks volumes about the quality of Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance. The horror elements of the film dominate the final stretch and, although always engagingly executed, don’t present much we haven’t seen before in the celluloid vampire canon, seemingly riffing on other offbeat interpretations like FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN.
SINNERS is a dense film, painted with grand IMAX strokes. In some ways, this makes it hard to latch onto any one element. However, as exhilarating as the action and music frequently are, seeing a film with this sense of scale grapple with bigger ideas is just as engaging. Subtext isn’t pruned, nor is it overexplained. Themes do not overwhelm the surface pleasures of the performances, nor the action that dominates the third act, yet they inform every interaction in the film.
In the wake of GET OUT in 2017, many films have chosen horror as the vehicle for simplistic metaphors for societal ills. Blockbusters have pulled their punches slightly on topics like oppression and colonialism (as with Coogler’s own BLACK PANTHER, which moves on swiftly from a scene where its villain reclaims African artefacts from an obvious British Museum stand-in). Coogler continues to grow as a filmmaker: the choice not to water down the more challenging ideas underneath the blockbuster sensibilities of SINNERS proves to be the lifeblood of the film.
SINNERS is now available on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-Ray.