‘Sinners’ Review: Ryan Coogler’s Survive-the-Night Vampire Epic Carries the Pulpy Ambition of an Assured Filmmaker [B+]

It’s often remarked how the rise of the superhero industrial complex over the past 15 years has robbed audiences of more varied roles from some of our most prominent movie stars, who’ve found themselves too tied up traveling through multiverses and assembling super-teams to fight galactic villains during their prime years. But in at least one case, there’s a promising director who’s found himself similarly preoccupied with high-dollar studio comic-book fare—despite a breakout indie that once promised exciting, original work from an emerging young talent.

Sinners is writer/director Ryan Coogler’s first genuinely original film since his intimate and incendiary debut, Fruitvale Station, in 2013. In the years since, he’s navigated the turbulent waters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe via two Black Panther films, doing his damndest to smuggle a distinct perspective into the focus-grouped, rigid necessities of the mega-franchise—even while assuming the unenviable responsibility of spearheading a sequel in the wake of lead actor Chadwick Boseman’s death. Before all that, he had already stepped into franchise filmmaking with the surprisingly stirring Rocky spin-off Creed.

Sinners is the work of that Hollywood blockbuster director returning to the fertile ground of creative ambition that first launched his career. Coogler reunites with regular collaborator Michael B. Jordan to deliver an unwieldy genre cocktail that feels both expansive in scope and resolute in its determination to explore weighty thematic preoccupations—particularly race and the broader story of America, a recurring interest for the filmmaker. That ambition is paired with the sensibilities of someone who’s helmed large-scale projects meant to play as immersive theatrical experiences. Appropriately, Sinners is the first film shot on both Ultra Panavision 70mm and IMAX film, boasts a sweeping two-and-a-half-hour runtime, and even sneaks in both a mid- and post-credits scene. Technically and structurally, it’s a movie made by someone who’s been around the mega-budget block and is now channeling that experience into something far more idiosyncratic.

But maybe most surprising is how much fun Coogler seems to be having with his material, zig-zagging between earnest Deep South period melodrama and the pulpier, supernatural action-horror elements that slowly creep in from the margins before fully engulfing the narrative in the final hour. You can sense the roguish tricks tucked up his sleeve as we’re introduced to early 1930s Mississippi and the arrival of Smoke and Stack—two twin brothers, both played by Jordan clearly having a blast playing up these Southern scoundrels—returning to their dusty hometown after trying to make it big working for the mob in the mythic big city of Chicago. At the very least, they’ve come back with a fat stack of cash and a dream: to open a juke joint for the oppressed local Black community while making their presence known—it’s only a matter of time before Smoke shoots someone in the ass for trying to loot his truck.

Ever resourceful, the brothers manage to secure an abandoned mill from a white landowner as the site for their club, and much of the film’s first half follows Smoke and Stack getting reacquainted with the town they left behind. That includes old flames—the headstrong Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) and the nurturing mystic Annie (Wunmi Mosaku); the local watering hole crooner Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo); and the duo’s young cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a budding blues performer stifled by his father’s exhortation of religious ideals. These characters round out the extended ensemble who eventually find themselves trapped for their lives at the newly opened Club Juke, besieged by a faction of foot-stomping, Irish folk song-singing vampires led by Remmick (Jack O’Connell). Rejected from a club meant to serve a subjugated population, the vampiric clan instead seeks to feed on the ebullience radiating from within Smoke and Stack’s walls.

Coogler’s metaphor here isn’t subtle—but it doesn’t need to be. Yes, this is a movie about a group of white vampires—some of whom were KKK members before crossing the threshold of death—descending upon an establishment built for Black joy and freedom. They quite literally vampirically suck the life out of the culture in order to repackage it into something they can control: a direct and introspective reflection on cultural hijacking and American race relations. It’s blunt and in practice somewhat haphazard, but part of what makes Sinners work, often in spite of itself, is that it’s big, sweeping, and messy, unashamed of being exactly what it wants to be at any given moment.

Sinners weaves through its various personas: sobering family drama; a surrealist vision of spiritual enlightenment brought on by the power of music; an explosive action movie. With its From Dusk Till Dawn-style bifurcation of genre and its engrossing, mythic American saga quality, it sometimes seems to have the opposite problem of most genre films. Rather than struggling to wedge in themes beneath the supernatural trappings, Sinners is so thematically dense it almost feels like it’s gratuitously shoving in the vampires. And it’s true that those looking for a film solely dedicated to vampire horror and carnage may wind up disappointed to find plenty of slow-paced, extensive  characterizations, and vampires that aren’t all that frightening within the volatile thriller context of this screenplay. Even its climactic, concentrated dose of human vs. vampire warfare comes off as clipped and even feels like a means to a more far-reaching end. It would be ruinous—if it weren’t so much fun to keep up with. The result is a constantly shape-shifting film, one that mutates with the wild energy of a free-form jazz performance.

It helps that Coogler has enlisted first-rate technical talent to bring it all to life. Cinematographer Autumn Durald’s camera smoothly transitions from the all-encompassing, shallow-focus intimacy of the performers in ultra-wide Panovision to the towering expanse of the IMAX aspect ratio, making the film feel both intimately lived-in and larger-than-life—all enhanced by fellow Coogler regular Hannah Beachler’s richly detailed production design. A bravura sequence tracks the whirlwind energy of Club Juke’s attendees while Sammie seems to distort time and space around him in real time, a perfect marriage of the film’s seemingly effortless visual style and the harmony between its design and musical elements. Coogler also reunites with composer Ludwig Göransson, who underscores both the suspense with the kind of memorable arrangements we’ve come to expect from one of our best contemporary composers.

Of course, leading the charge is Jordan and his terrific pair of performances, inhabiting both the clashing and harmonious aspects of Smoke and Stack to such a degree that you’re never less than totally convinced you’re watching two separate actors living within these scenes together. That’s not simply the power of visual effects—it’s the work of a performer who knows exactly what to bring to the ever-changing temperament of a film that wants to have many different dispositions all at once. And Sinners is many different things: ponderous, funny, horny, violent, at times emotionally exalting. Coogler doesn’t always wrangle these elements together in the most productive way, but it’s constantly thrilling to watch him lean into his instincts with the level of abandon he engages in here. Sinners doesn’t just mark a return to form for Coogler—it signals a filmmaker who’s still evolving, still chasing the limit of what a big, strange, soulful movie can be.

Warner Bros will release Sinners only in theaters and IMAX screens on April 18.

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Trace Sauveur

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