Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Ryan Coogler
Writer: Ryan Coogler
Producer: Zinzi Coogler, Sev Ohanian, Ryan Coogler
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Buddy Guy, Delroy Lindo
Review Score:
Summary:
In 1932 Mississippi, vampires descend upon an underground juke joint during a night of revelry for plantation sharecroppers.
Review:
Horror movies often show their hands too early when they start with a stinger. Most times, a pre-title prologue where someone’s frantic fleeing ends in murder or mystery plays like a producer’s mandate to give the audience a jolt before filling up on a first act of quieter exposition. Other times, a movie might betray its story with a frightful flash-forward that fosters more frustration than intrigue by giving away a reveal simply for the sake of an eye-catching opening.
“Sinners” has an intro checking both of those boxes, but without facing the usual consequences of spoiling a surprise or boring viewers after cheating with a spontaneous shock. More than that, starting out of sequence works well for “Sinners” because without the conceit, and without a bit of narration philosophizing about music as a supernatural doorway, you’d never have any inclination that the film features vampires if you didn’t already know. For the first 45 minutes, detailed character-building and scene-setting might make you think you’re settling into a slow-burn crime thriller or dramatic period piece.
Michael B. Jordan gets prominent placement on the poster, in name and image, for his dual role as twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” Moore, but Miles Caton bookends the movie as their young cousin Sammie, a gifted blues musician picking cotton in 1932 Mississippi. Based on billing, then considering who appears first and last, it’s tough to say who’s the main character pumping the warmest blood into the film’s heartbeat. That’s open to individual interpretation, as are the thematic parallels and metaphors that come carefully couched in traditional action and engaging drama for those who choose easy entertainment over examining historical horrors shaping the story’s context.
I also don’t know how hard anyone wants to go on giving “Sinners” a single label as a “horror” film. It absolutely is one, though the term can rub people the wrong way in two different directions. Movie marketers who associate “horror” with cheap slashers and killer scarecrows probably prefer to play up the award-attracting prestige a Ryan Coogler production brings. And even with descendants of Dracula populating the screen, B-movie fans can have an entitled ownership of “horror” that causes offense when a film focuses more on interpersonal relationships than sharp-fanged fury. A neutral way to put it would be to not necessarily call “Sinners” a “vampire movie,” but rather to say it’s a movie that uses vampires to tell its human tale. There is a difference.
Adding another fragrance to its potpourri of genres, “Sinners” lays groundwork similarly to how heist films put their pieces in play. Recently returned from Chicago with a literal truckload of gangster money, Smoke and Stack are back in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to build the liveliest juke joint local sharecroppers have ever seen. After buying a vacant building from a sweaty racist with the apropos name of Hogwood, the boys begin by recruiting their ideal “Mission: Impossible” team of entertainers, grocery suppliers, cooks, and bouncers to pull off their plan. Along the way, Smoke and Stack have encounters with exes that give new life to old ghosts while Sammie eyes a fresh romance with an attractive singer.
“Sinners” morphs into a musical during multiple moments, including one surprising number choreographed with Irish folk dancing. It’s essential to admire how seamlessly Coogler weaves these seemingly disparate elements into one cohesive motion picture. Otherwise, anyone stuck in one gear is liable to limit their experience to wondering when the vampires will fully show up and finally show out. They do, of course, when the undead unexpectedly upend the juke joint’s first night festivities, and “Sinners” takes its almost-final form as a “From Dusk Till Dawn”-like siege film complete with firefights, fisticuffs, bleeding necks, and a blazing building for good measure.
Amid this late-stage carnage, and in the comparative calmness complementing either side of it, exists a tighter 100-minute thriller that’s consistent enough in its narrative intentions and cinematic style to be a pleasing taste for more mainstream tongues than it currently satisfies. Universal appeal presents a challenge because “Sinners” runs 135 minutes, and the interspersion of those additional 25 can take viewers out of the immersion with what may look like meandering without meaning to them.
Coogler’s script includes many minutes of talking. Dialogue is always interesting, and the delivery from invested performers is even better. But some monologues and conversations sound more anecdotal, even for the characters, than integral to their arcs. Coogler’s indulgence in nonessential asides implies he created a rich world where everyone has a deeper, unseen history with one another, and he didn’t want to fire up all that fiction for too short of a film. To solve the perceived problem of perhaps not spending enough time in Clarksdale, “Sinners” adds in exchanges that tamper with tempo.
Like reductively describing “Sinners” as any single genre, it’s non-informative to point out the movie will hit different people in different ways, and for different reasons, something true of virtually every film ever made. A complex yet compact epic to one person is an average night at the theater for another. As alluded to earlier though, no matter where an opinion lands, you still have to tip your cap to an imaginative vision that stays so true to pursuing its own path, it even finds a way to end on Buddy Guy concert footage. That’s just one final flourish from an auteur exploring what he can do creatively to make a movie that’s personal art to some while being approachable entertainment to others.
NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene and a post-credits scene.
Review Score: 75
No matter where a personal opinion lands, you still have to tip your cap to an imaginative vision that stays true to pursuing its own path.