Returning to their home in the Mississippi Delta, twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore (Michael B. Jordan, both), purchase an old sawmill with intent of turning the place into a juke joint for the local community to let loose together.  Stocked with Italian wine, Irish beer, and fresh catfish, all that is left is the music and for that they turn to their young cousin Sammie “Preacher Boy” (Miles Caton).  It is opening night, and the club is a hit, but when Remmick (Jack O’Connell), and Irish immigrant on the run from the local Choctaw tribe, shows up on the doorstep of Club Juke, trouble is not far behind him. 

Ryan Coogler writes and directs Sinners for Warner Brothers, a passion project that reunites him with frequent muse, Jordan, and marks his first foray into wholly original storytelling.  The 138-minute film was a buzzy acquisition for Warner Brothers, securing the title an IMAX camera package including a limited 70mm run as part of its 3,300 screen holiday opening.  A brief prologue informs us of the timeless and supernatural connection that music has provided across generations and cultures, before Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s lens captures Preacher Boy – limping, bloody, and with only the headstock and neck end of a broken guitar in his hand – pulling up to the small white chapel for a prodigal son reunion with his father. 

After the unsettling open, the film jumps back in time a mere 24 hours where Coogler throws us right into the deep end on this dense narrative that has been percolating for some time now in a way that is both disorienting yet entirely refreshing in a landscape so dominated by IP, remakes, and adaptations.  To complicate matters, Jordan, in a dual role as the twins, fast talkers who can practically complete each others sentences, and with a storied history behind them – possibly, one, too, which they are on the run from – we have little to keep track of them beyond Ruth E. Carter’s red and blue accessorized suits.  It is a thrilling freedom, though, entering into this world of Coogler’s imagination without any preconceived notion of who these characters are or where this story is headed.  Coogler and his creative team are always in lock step as they bring about this almost clandestine action thriller in that it takes place in only a few locations and across a truncated period of time so that we quickly fall into the cadence of the film and are marching along with these characters across the hours of this ill-fated night. 

Sinners has a lot of ground to cover, and the first act is very much following the getting the team together trajectory.  Coogler, with a backing in Marvel among his credits, is no stranger to the three-act structure, and he peppers this act with plenty of flourishes stemming from Hannah Beachler’s production design that captures this pulpy and bold take on the Jim Crow South of the 1930s as well as letting Arkapaw show off behind the camera with long tracking shots capturing the dusty splendor of the town while we see the townsfolk bustle and bump against each other.  The twins are an energetic bunch with an infectious enthusiasm that pours out not only onto the characters – some of whom have to take a little convincing that this is not all part of an elaborate scheme – but also gets our appetites whetted for whatever tricks these two brothers have up their sleeves. 

As the sun begins to set on the Delta, the brothers’ hard work pays off.  The club is a hit, but tensions begin to rise about if the club will accept plantation money or not.  It is a drama that adds some context to the opposing at times philosophies of the two brothers, fits covertly into the architecture of the narrative, and begins to scratch at the themes resting at the core of the film surrounding art and ownership.  Sinners is not as overt about the commercialization of art and culture as say, Brady Corbet’s recent approach to a similar theme in The Brutalist (2024), but from a distance his utilization of vampire lore and the very parasitic nature of the creature is a little on the nose, yet in a fun way that still jives with the fast nature of the rest of the film. 

Before the vampires arrive, however, Coogler turns the reigns of the film over from Smoke and Stack to Preacher Boy to lay down some music and christen the dance floor.  The resulting scene is nothing short of transcendent as, if one will recall the narration that opened the film and is repeated here, Preacher Boy’s music pierces the veil between past and future, the dead and the living, and calls forth like a siren to Remmick; a creature stuck in between the mortal planes, forced into darkness, and seeking out whatever beauty he can find.  Arkapaw again gets to show off behind the camera as it travels to and fro across the dancefloor, while music from across the ages blends and comes together and allows Ludwig Göransson‘s score room to breathe beyond the soulful Sothern twang as he delivers Coogler’s thesis through sonic tones.  From tribal roots, to blues, evolving into funk and modern rap after branching out to show traditional Chinese theatre, too, it is a bold and inventive swing taken by Coogler before pivoting his film into something more recognizable as horror, and its power comes not only in the expert way of which this is presented, but in its restraint.  He shows just enough to let us fill in the gaps without any ambiguity insofar as the thesis is concerned so we are left perfectly satisfied, if not a little stunned, and not either ill prepared for what is to come or scorned by his over-insistence. 

Once Coogler fully entrenches himself into the horror genre, Sinners takes on an entirely new and electric feel.  He wields the vampire lore with such confidence, never stopping to explain it but allowing audiences already in the know to feel the immediate tension while still providing enough framework that those less familiar with the ins and outs of vampirism that they can learn the rules of the genre and more importantly the rules of the world in which this film is set.   

This shift also takes Sinners into a more action packed realm, and Coogler is not afraid to get down and dirty.  There is a surprising amount of blood in this film, not surprising in that it is there given the subject matter, but surprising in its utilization.  The reds are not as bright as the splatter contained in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) – a clear inspiration for Coogler, here – but rather they maintain the rusty, dusty hues blending in to the lamp light.  It is not until they land, staining the skin and sweat-soaked white cotton undershirts, that the red really begins to pop.  This careful choice again proves that sometimes less can be more and stays in line with the overall tone that Coogler was looking to set up; a world in a hyper realistic reality that never feels too farfetched or animated that it lessens the stakes.  The world of Sinners is a dangerous one, and by moderating how the bloodshed is portrayed, each kill leaves behind an impact on the audience in a way that most horror films are unable to achieve. These are characters that we have endeared ourselves to across the runtime and not just monster fodder, especially since the from half plays out like a drama keeping much of its supernatural ideas close to the chest until a turn about 45 minutes in to the runtime.  Sinners is a character-first approach to horror instead of horror or gore first so that even when these characters rise back up from the dead, the pain of their initial passing still lingers with us leading to a powerful and poignant catharsis at daybreak under first rays of the rising sun. 

With Sinners, Coogler delivers an exciting entry that, given its success at the box office, can hopefully pave the way for more bold and creative visions to be greenlit and pushed by studios in a meaningful way.  With A24, Neon, and Mubi, smaller films are seeing a boon, but mid to large budget films have really fallen off as studio heads  have bet the house against the success of decades old IP, chasing near-unobtainable gains and marking everything that failed to meet those preposterous numbers a failure before the opening Saturday matinee set has even let out.  There are still creative and bold ideas out there.  There are still teams of artists ready to come together and rally behind those ideas.  And there are still audiences hungry to engage with something they have not seen before.  It is a shame that the marketing team felt the need to spill the beans about the vampire elements of the film, spoiling what could have made for an incredible twist, but hopefully Sinners can be the first step to healing the box office and retraining the audience that sometimes you need to just trust the filmmaker and not know everything that is in store for you weeks in advance.  Sinners is undeniably dense, but it is a rich text that washes over the audience with ease and with this much craft, care, and love packed into every frame, it has all the makings of the stylized classics which Coogler cites as his touchstones in bringing this vision to life. Much like Preacher Boy, Coogler has pierced the veil and built an inspiration that can and will stand the test of time.