Sinners (2025)
Dancing with the Devil?
It’s 1932, and twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) are finally heading home. The hard-hitting duo have returned to Clarksdale, Mississippi after finishing a bootlegging stint in Chicago.
Flush with cash after their exploits up north, the brothers purchase a sawmill and convert it into a juke joint. Blues music is popular in the area. The joint is intended as a safe haven for the local Black community.
Stack’s ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) shows up to confront him. She’s mixed race, but appears White. Although her “whiteness” and beauty give her a certain amount of societal privilege, she is stuck in an uneasy limbo between the two sides of the Jim Crow divide.
The brothers find plenty of evil lurking in their hometown. Not only is it a haven for the segregation-era Ku Klux Klan, but rumors of supernatural occult activity is rampant. Some people even claim that blues music is from the devil! Others insist that the KKK is a thing of the past. Smoke and Stack know better.
As the community dances and sings in the juke joint, a trio of White traveling musicians show up at the door. They seem nice enough. They just want to join in on the fun, they say. After all, they love blues music, and are skilled at playing it. Let us in, they say. Please. Just let us in!
A Biting Allegory
The vampires in Sinners want everyone to act and think the same way. They are relentlessly charming in pursuit of this goal. It’s only after they seduce you that they show their true colors.
The White musicians are playing traditional Black music. This would be fine (I guess?) if they genuinely respected and loved blues. Instead, they’re just using music as a ploy to transform Black people into themselves. The cultural assimilation allegory is obvious.
Do vampires ever think about what would happen if they achieved their end goal? Let’s take their plan to its logical conclusion. What if everyone was a vampire? They can’t drink each other’s blood, right? They need living humans to feed on. But what if there weren’t any? Their ultimate victory would lead to them all starving to death.
That’s the point that Sinners is trying to make – that cultural assimilation, conformity, and groupthink are evils that starve minds, kill souls, and lead to ultimate destruction.
Although it’s set in the distant past, Sinners‘ themes are just as relevant today as they were in the 1930s. It sucks the life out of us when we consume toxic social media content and racist propaganda. This garbage is our cultural vampire, poisoning the lifeblood of society.
Michael B. Jordan Gives His Finest Performance
Michael B. Jordan works miracles with his role as Smoke and Stack. Playing one role is tough enough. Playing two, and giving each character their own distinct voice and personality, is remarkable. Jordan has yet to deliver a bad performance in any movie. It’ll be interesting to see if he can top this one.
Sinners is directed by Ryan Coogler, who previously worked with Jordan in Black Panther. Coogler’s cinematography is spot on here. He’s great at directing big action sequences and small intimate moments. Sinners is filmed in 65 mm and uses many long tracking shots to give it an appropriately retro look and feel.
Coogler’s direction reaches its apex during a wild musical sequence in the juke point. The logistical challenges of filming this scene must have been staggering, but the cast and crew pull it off with seeming ease.
Any flaws here? Well, the pacing could have been better. The film moves a little slow during its first half. It concludes with a fascinating mid-credits scene that paves the way, not only for a potential sequel, but a sprawling franchise. Sinners could have cut down the beginning and placed this last scene before the credits.
Hopefully Coogler and Jordan will team up for more movies in the future. They continue to make impressive work together.
Rating
Sinners is a stunning triumph that works as both a vampire movie and an allegory. It’s a virtual certainty to appear on my 2025 top ten movies list.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 9
