Music, horror, and Jim Crow – Review: Sinners
Music and horror collide in this stunning new film from Ryan Coogler. Sinners is a tour de force of creativity and vision from the acclaimed director. He elevates his oft-used Michael B. Jordan to new heights with a riveting double performance as twin brothers. While the third act has some sloppiness to it, it’s easily forgivable in light of the excellence that precedes it.
After opening with a dark tease of the supernatural occurrences to come, Sinners starts off as a Southern crime drama. Smoke and Stack (Jordan) have returned home from Chicago to Delta Mississippi during the Jim Crow era to take a piece of the pie for themselves by opening up a juke joint. Their younger cousin, Sammie, is a talented blues musician who dreams of escaping from his overbearing preacher father and petitions to play the blues at the joint.
Nearly half the runtime of the film is dedicated to the brothers at work preparing to open the joint the very night they buy it. There is a wonderful workmanship to the direction and writing of this opening part of the film as the groundwork is laid through characters, themes, and story. The drama is so well-realized that one would be forgiven for deciding they didn’t want or need the supernatural elements to come into play. While Jordan is captivating, newcomer Miles Caton also brings an effortless charisma to the role of Sammie, making him a worthy character alongside the twins. The audience is drawn into his hopes and desires and infatuation with music.
Music and its power underpin the film. Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson not only composed the score but also served as an executive producer on the film. The tapestry of sounds interspersed in the score, and the song selection, form a major part of the thematic commentary of the film. The combination of Delta blues and more orchestral sounds make for a unique soundscape.Characters performing blues and folk songs punctuate several moments in the film, including a central scene where music throughout time is linked in an amazing, surrealistic sequence that exemplifies Coogler’s skills as a director.
Much of the movie is a comment on Black culture, appropriation, and trying to achieve freedom both economic and otherwise. The way the film explores this via the central villain, an Irish vampire who is drawn to the sound of Sammie’s music and wishes to acquire it for himself, is quite smart, especially when surrounded by the script’s other commentaries on how people seek freedom and to make their lives better.
Religion is also an obvious thematic topic, given the title. Sammie’s relationship with his preacher father is a complicated and nuanced one, and there are multiple scenes throughout referring to scripture or an idea of faith. Without getting into it too much, Sinners helps display the dichotomy Black Americans feel about Christianity. The range of views throughout the community is wide, with some arguing that it is the religion forced upon them by the oppressive, colonizing European powers, while other embrace its theology of liberation. The fight for abolition in both the US and the UK called upon moral, Biblical authority, but the pro-slavery side also cited cherry-picked Bible passages. This film wrestles with those ideas without weighing too heavily on either side.
The strong women of the film also need to be mentioned. Wunmi Mosaku, Hailee Steinfeld, and Jayme Lawson all take over their roles and characters. While less development is given to them than to the leads, each of the supporting performances does more than needed to center the audience in the characters and keep us enjoying all of them. Steinfeld’s biracial character who passes as white underlines some of the thematic and character arcs for Stack’s character, especially in a crucial mid-credit coda.
Some are likely wondering: is Sinners good at horror? Rest assured, Cooler proves adept at crossing into that genre. When the supernatural finally arrives, it is creepy, bloody, and elemental. Jack O’Connell‘s Irish vamp is referred to as the Devil at one point, and his off-putting, charming demeanor encapsulates that idea. The twisted solidarity of the vampires, and their presentation as an egalitarian alternative to segregation and racism, make for an interesting debate in the film: who are the real monsters of the Jim Crow south?
Sinners is a captivating film. Coogler’s skill with the camera and framing scenes and shots is evident. Working in concert with the music, the film has multiple moments of intense emotion and drama, and some of these are early candidates for scene of the year. There are times where it all doesn’t quite come together. It invites a few contractions in the writing, with characters occasionally acting in a contrived manner to move the plot along. The internal rules of the vampires seem to change slightly in the final moments of the film to set up the aforementioned, must-see mid-credit scene. But again, these are minor complaints about what is mostly a masterpiece.
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