Ryan Coogler completely reinvents the vampire genre as we know it, taking the bloodsucking monsters out of dour European castles and bringing them to the sweltering backwoods of 1930s Mississippi. His characters are magnetic and layered with the tense history of racial divisions in their small town. Michael B. Jordan exquisitely differentiates the twin characters he plays—Smoke and Stack—who are both hustling for a better life. They hope to rake in cash at the raucous party they’re throwing that night for the cotton-pickers, maids, and other hard-working members of the Black community.
With booze, blues, and sweaty bodies writhing together, it’s the kind of fun, freedom, and sin that vampire life is meant to unlock—but in Sinners, it’s something humans already have access to. Sinners has an entirely different kind of vampire villain. While threatened by familiar tropes like garlic, stakes to the heart, and burning in sunlight, the leader Remmick (Jack O’Connell) doesn’t hunt out of hunger; he wants to build a community of his own. Only Ryan Coogler could make a horde of vampires dancing to an Irish jig feel both haunting and hilarious.
Sinners shatters all expectations for a vampire film—beginning as a slow-burn historical drama before becoming a blood-soaked spectacle, with all sorts of wicked humor, pathos, sensuality, and thumping music in between.
