SINNERS (2025)

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:

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Summary:

In 1932 Mississippi, vampires descend upon an underground juke joint during a night of revelry for plantation sharecroppers.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

On October 15th, 1932, twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” Moore return from Chicago to Clarksdale, Mississippi, with plans to use stolen gangster money to build a juke joint for old friends, acquaintances, and family members working as sharecroppers on the Sunflower Plantation. The brothers begin by purchasing a vacant sawmill from racist landowner Hogwood, who is secretly a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon. Although his preacher father Jedidiah disapproves of music because he believes it can attract evil, Smoke and Stack’s young cousin Sammie Moore excitedly prepares to use his talent as an aspiring blues guitarist and singer for the barrelhouse’s entertainment.

Smoke drives into town to recruit Bo and Grace Chow, who run a small grocery with their daughter Lisa, to provide food for the juke’s first night festivities. While in town, Smoke wounds two thieves with gunfire when they try to steal from his truck.

After recounting how his brother murdered their abusive father, Stack is impressed by a song Sammie plays while they drive to the train station, where Stack hires longtime bluesman Delta Slim to play piano at the juke. Also at the station, Sammie takes an interest in Pearline, an attractive singer who tells Sammie she is married, but he invites her to the party anyway. Meanwhile, Stack has an uncomfortable encounter with his half-white ex-girlfriend Mary, who married another man but still feels abandoned from when Stack left her for Chicago. Stack and Sammie leave the station with Delta Slim after inviting everyone there to the new club. The men then make one final stop to hire burly field worker Cornbread as the juke joint’s bouncer.

Wanting her to be the club’s cook, Smoke visits his estranged wife Annie, who runs a small tincture shop for superstitious locals. Following a conversation about her supernatural beliefs as well as the death of their infant daughter, Smoke and Annie end up having sex.

With his skin burning from sunlight, Irish immigrant vampire Remmick seeks shelter in the remote home of KKK couple Bert and Joan. Horseback hunters from a Choctaw tribe come to the house searching for Remmick, but Joan turns them away at gunpoint. Remmick then transforms both Bert and Joan into vampires.

The juke joint opens for the evening with everyone in their respective roles. Sammie is excited to see Pearline show up, and the two of them eventually get intimate. Despite the acrimony between her and Stack, Mary shows up too, leading to a confrontation where Stack admits he is still in love with her.

Seemingly summoned by Sammie’s entrancing music, Remmick, Bert, and Joan arrive outside claiming they merely wish to come inside to join the revelry. To prove their claim, the three of them pull out instruments and begin playing harmonious music. Still wary of the suspicious outsiders, Smoke turns them away.

Smoke and Sammie have a contentious confrontation about Sammie’s desire to leave the plantation despite Smoke’s threatening insistence that he only play music for his business ventures. Meanwhile, Stack sends Mary to learn more about the trio.

Mary’s subsequent encounter with Remmick, Bert, and Joan ends with her being turned into a vampire. Upon returning to the juke, Mary lures Stack into a private room where she bites his neck during an intimate moment.

Smoke walks in on Mary killing his brother. Smoke shoots Mary several times, but she is unphased by the bullets. Threatening that everyone there will die, Mary runs outside laughing.

With Stack dead, the juke shuts down early. Bo Chow helps escort partygoers outside where, unbeknownst to the few people remaining in the building, they are turned into vampires.

Having stepped away earlier to relieve himself, Cornbread returns to his post at the door, but strangely asks for permission to enter, which causes Annie to become suspicious. Denied a verbal invitation, Cornbread reveals he was transformed into a vampire by trying to bite Smoke’s arm. Smoke shoots Cornbread. Cornbread immediately rises from the ground, spurring Smoke, Sammie, Delta Slim, Annie, Pearline, and Grace Chow to barricade themselves against the gathering threat.

Resurrected as a vampire, Stack bursts through the door of the room he was locked in. Annie confirms her belief that they are dealing with vampires by dousing Stack in pickled garlic juice that makes his skin burn as he escapes outside. Recognizing the danger they are in, Annie arms the handful of survivors with wooden stakes as well as garlic they forcibly eat to prove to each other they were not secretly turned.

After unifying their horde with a group song, Remmick returns with dozens of vampires including Stack, Mary, Bo, and Cornbread. As part of his bargaining dialogue with the survivors, Remmick reveals Hogwood only sold the sawmill to the twins because Hogwood planned to murder everyone inside with his fellow KKK members. Stack, Mary, and Bo join the taunting.

Enraged by Remmick and Bo threatening to go after her daughter, Grace furiously shouts for the vampires to come at them. A massive fight ensues between both sides as flames from a Molotov cocktail spread throughout the building.

Grace dies in the melee. Stack bites Annie, forcing Smoke to stake his wife through her heart. Delta Slim sacrifices himself so others can escape a vampire mob. Remmick attacks Pearline.

Clutching his guitar, Sammie escapes outside, but he is caught by Remmick, who tells Sammie he wants to assimilate Sammie’s stories and songs into the vampires’ collective consciousness. Back in the juke, Smoke and Stack face off against each other.

Sammie smashes his guitar into Remmick’s head, creating a fatal gash that causes all other vampires to recoil in immense pain. Before he can kill Sammie, Smoke arrives in time to stake Remmick through his heart from behind. As dawn begins breaking, the vampires combust along with Remmick.

Following a reconciliatory moment with Smoke, Sammie returns to his father Jedidiah’s church with a scarred face and broken guitar. Jedidiah pauses his frightened congregation’s worship to advise his son to drop the guitar and leave his sinning ways behind him. Later, Sammie drives out of Clarksdale.

Back at the sawmill, Hogwood arrives with his KKK followers. Having armed himself with multiple firearms in response to Remmick’s tipoff about the impending ambush, Smoke starts a firefight that kills everyone, including Hogwood. However, Smoke collapses from a fatal bullet wound he took in his stomach. As he dies from bleeding out, Smoke sees a comforting vision of Annie nursing their baby.

Exactly 60 years later in Chicago, Sammie performs at a blues club he named in Pearline’s honor. Enjoying a drink alone after his show, Sammie is surprised by a visit from Stack and Mary, who were able to survive by evolving into a stronger breed of vampire. Stack reveals Smoke let him escape the juke in exchange for a promise that he would allow Sammie to live out his life undisturbed. After declining an offer for immortality, Sammie plays the same song for Stack and Mary that he first played for Stack during their car ride in 1932.

Before Stack and Mary exit, Sammie tells them that until the sun went down, October 15th, 1932, was the best night of his life. Stack agrees, adding that it was the last time he saw his brother or the sun, and the first time he ever felt truly free.

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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

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