Sinners (2025) Warner Bros./Horror-Thriller RT: 137 minutes Rated R (strong bloody violence, sexual content, language) Director: Ryan Coogler Screenplay: Ryan Coogler Music: Ludwig Goransson Cinematography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw Release date: April 18, 2025 (US) Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Delroy Lindo, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, Yao, Lola Kirke, Peter Dreimanis, Helena Hu, Saul Williams, Andrene Ward-Hammond, David Maldonado.
Rating: ***
It’s interesting that Warner Bros. opted to release Sinners on Good Friday, the most solemn holy day on the Christian calendar. To avoid getting in trouble with the Man Upstairs, I saw it on Thursday night and the animated The King of Kings on Friday. I hope it makes up for all the times I saw horror movies (e.g. The Seventh Sign, 976-EVIL and The Reaping) on Easter Sunday.
Ryan Coogler is a filmmaker of lofty ambition. He arrived on the scene in 2013 with the incendiary indie drama Fruitvale Station. He followed that up with the Rocky spin-off Creed (2015), the Marvel adventure Black Panther (2018) and its lugubrious sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). Now the writer-director gives us Sinners, a mash-up of a few genres- e.g. period gangster drama, Delta blues musical and vampire horror with a heaping dash of social commentary about racism. It’s a tricky juggling act that gets away from Coogler more than once, but he mostly manages to keep all the balls in the air.
Set in 1932, Sinners opens with Sammie (newcomer Caton), aspiring blues musician and son of the local pastor, showing up at his father’s church bloodied and disheveled carrying a broken guitar. His dad urges him to repent and choose the church over playing the devil’s music. He’s been through something terrible, but what?
The scene then flashes back about 24 hours to when it all started. Twin brothers and WWI vets Smoke and Stack (Jordan, Creed I-III) return home to the Mississippi Delta after a long absence. They’ve been living the gangster lifestyle in Chicago. They stole a bunch of money and plan to open a juke joint that caters exclusively to the black community. They buy an old sawmill from a racist AH (Maldonado, The Tomorrow War) who promises them the KKK no longer exists. Maybe yes and maybe no, but could the Klan be any worse than what they’ll be facing after the sun goes down?
First, the brothers set about recruiting local folks to lend a hand on their grand opening. They hire pianist Delta Slim (Lindo, Clockers) and singer Pearline (Lawson, Till) to accompany their cousin Sammie. They bring in Smoke’s ex-wife Annie (Mosaku, Alice, Darling) to prepare the food provided by Chinese shopkeepers Bo (Yao, The Last Bout) and Grace Chow (Li, Babylon). They also convince a big, strapping fellow named Cornbread (Miller, CSI: Miami) to work the door keeping all the white folks out.
Things get off to a good start. Everybody is dancing and having a grand old time. Stack’s ex-girlfriend Mary (Steinfeld, Bumblebee), who’s part black but can pass for white, shows up to join the party even though she hasn’t forgiven Stack for leaving her. When Sammie plays, it transcends time. In the film’s most electrifying sequence, spirits of people from different eras (past and future) show up to dance and boogie while the young man gets lost in the music. It’s about then that all hell breaks loose.
A trio of uninvited guests appears at the door. The leader Remmick (O’Connell, Unbroken) asks to be allowed in. Smoke and Stack want no part of them. Something’s off about them. It turns out they’re right. They’re vampires and they want to increase their numbers. They start turning people until there’s only a few left to keep the bloodsuckers at bay until the sunrise.
There’s nothing especially original about the handling of vampire lore in Sinners. They can only be killed by garlic, the sun or a wooden stake through the heart. They can’t enter someplace without being invited in first. The only real difference is they’re meant to be a metaphor for all marginalized people, blacks in the Jim Crow south in particular. It’s a bit of a reach and brilliant at the same time. The whole idea of people trapped in a bar by vampires brings to mind From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) minus Quentin Tarantino and the whole foot fetish thing.
Sinners is entertainment on a large canvas. Coogler shot it on 65mm with IMAX cameras. It makes for an expansive picture. It looks amazing. The gore effects are both plentiful and convincing. It’s not as gory as a Terrifier movie, but it has enough to satisfy most gorehounds. The only problem with Sinners is the pacing, especially in the beginning. It takes a minute to really get rolling, but it rocks once it does.
The acting is pretty good all around. That is to say, there are no bad performances here. Caton is definitely a star in the making. He crushes it as Sammie, a young man trying to figure out his place in the world. Is he a blues musician or a future pastor? Jordan does great work in the dual roles of Smoke and Stack, two brothers who look alike but have different views on many things. Mosaku is affecting as the ex-wife still mourning for the baby she lost in childbirth. An occultist, she warns of bad things happening if the guys open the juke joint.
Like any human you can name, Sinners is not perfect. It’s a bit messy actually. Coogler tries to cram in everything plus the kitchen sink. Of course, he can’t let the movie end without a big action scene involving Jordan mowing down a small army of Klansmen. At the same time, there’s a lot of good stuff in it. The music is phenomenal and not just the blues stuff heard throughout. At times, the score sounds like something from an Italian horror film of the 70s/80s. In the end, it’s a good movie. It’s totally worth the price of admission.
P.S. Don’t just jump up and leave when the end credits start. Stick around for a mid-credits sequence and a little something extra at the end. I know, it feels like Coogler doesn’t know when to shut up. Well, this is one of the times when it’s worth seeing what more he has to say.
