Sinners (2025)
Directed by: Ryan Coogler
Premise: In 1932 Mississippi, twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) set up a juke joint for local Black customers. On opening night, the club is sieged by vampires.
What Works: Sinners begins as a historical drama and that’s its greatest strength. Set in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow era, the film follows a pair of twin brothers who have returned to their roots after a big score in Chicago. The first half of Sinners follows the brothers as they set around town recruiting locals to play music and serve food. The filmmakers vividly recreate the era with a lot of period detail but also a feel for the racial politics of the time. The characters of color have to be careful about where they go and whose company they keep and the filmmakers draw out those concerns organically; the racial politics come through in the way the characters behave and speak to each other. The brothers’ errands put them in contact with people with whom they have history and that backstory gives depth to these characters. Sinners has some great performances, namely Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as the twins. Each of Jordan’s characters is distinct with different temperaments. Also impressive are Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Wunmi Mosaku, and Miles Caton. Music is especially important to Sinners in its plot as well as in the fabric of the movie. There is a musicality and sensuality to the filmmaking and Sinners features a standout musical sequence that stitches together the personal and cultural implications of music; it visualizes the way music can transcend time and physicality to connect us with other people on a spiritual level.
What Doesn’t: Sinners switches gears about halfway through, transitioning from a historical drama to a horror film. This part of the movie is much less interesting than the first half. We’ve seen this scenario before in From Dusk Till Dawn and 30 Days of Night. The vampirism of Sinners is strictly traditional and the story follows a standard horror film siege plot. There are some racial implications to the vampirism of Sinners but the filmmakers don’t do anything interesting with the concept; the conceit of the story doesn’t allow the space for it. The plotting is messy and the storytelling is inefficient. The characters have interesting and complicated relationships but much of this is discarded in the second half. No one grows or learns anything and very little that is set up in the first half is paid off. The immediate threat of the vampires is paralleled by a separate white supremacist subplot but these elements don’t coalesce. After resolving the vampire story, Sinners continues with multiple endings including a tagged on final confrontation that doesn’t really resolve anything and a coda sequence that undercuts the climax. The cinematography of Sinners is frequently too dark; much of the film takes place at night and the imagery is too murky to discern the details.
Bottom Line: The first half of Sinners is masterful but the second half is merely adequate. There is some great stuff in the movie, especially in its characterization and use of music, but the storytelling is messy and disjointed.
Episode: #1045 (April 27, 2025)