Blood is Thicker than Water

Film: Sinners
Format: AMC Market Square Theater (Theater 8)

I have to think that it’s not easy to try to rework a classic monster into something new. Tell people that you’re making (another) werewolf movie or (another) zombie movie and you’re likely to often get a yawn in response. That’s nowhere more the case than with vampires. Seriously, how many different versions of vampires are there? How many times have I reviewed yet another version of the basic Dracula story on this blog? (Answer—at least six that are based directly on the Bram Stoker novel). So if you can do something really new, you’ve got a chance to get an audience really interested. That’s where we are starting with Sinners.

This is a vampire story, not a Dracula-specific story, though. We’re going to get vampires here that are going to have a lot of similarities to traditional vampires (weakness to garlic, killed by sunlight or a stake to the heart), but these are more of a hive mind of vampires, and while they are certainly sexual in a lot of ways, these are not romantic in the least. These vampires are more feral, and that works to the story’s benefit.

Most of the film is told in flashback. We start in 1932 with a young man walking into a church with a broken guitar, but there’s no explanation for this right away. We’re going to drop back to “one day earlier” where we are introduced to Elijah and Elias Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan), who are better known by their nicknames, Smoke and Stack. The Moores have returned to Mississippi after years in New York working in criminal enterprises, possibly for Al Capone. The two have come back and purchased an old sawmill with the intent of opening a juke joint.

To play at the joint, they have enlisted their cousin Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore (Miles Caton), who has a rare talent. Sammie is a musician of rare ability—someone who can essentially breach the veil between the living and the dead. He can musically recall ancestors and look down toward descendants. While this has great power to heal, it also has the power to attract evil. In this case, what Sammie has attracted is Remmick (Jack O’Connell), a vampire from Ireland.

While Smoke and Stack start to collect people around them to help at the joint—food, drinks, more musicians, door guard—Remmick coverts a few people to help him track down Sammie. He wants Sammie specifically because Sammie can recall ancestors and loved ones through his music, something that Remmick is desperate for, since his years as a vampire have kept him separated from the people he has lost.

Of course there are going to be complications to what is otherwise a pretty straight ahead story. Smoke reunites with his wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), who has tried to keep him protected with her own magical abilities. Stack has an angry reunion with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) who has just lost her mother. Mary also passes for white, something that was a problem in their relationship. The two also recruit Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) as a local well-known musician, the local Chinese store owners (Li Jun Li and Yao), and Cornbread (Omar Miller) to work the door. Eventually, Remmick is going to show up with his turned vampires (Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) to kill everyone in the juke joint in the hopes of turning them.

Almost everything in Sinners works. The story is a compelling one and fascinating, and Coogler is a fantastic storyteller. It’s also a visually interesting film, with fantastic tracking shots, beautiful cinematography, and a sequence with Sammie singing in the joint that is an all-time banger of a musical sequence. The music is as good as you’re going to find—every song in this is better than every song that was in Emilia Perez.

It's also cast within an inch of its life. This is evidently Miles Caton’s first film, and it’s one hell of a debut, but this is absolutely Michael B. Jordan’s film from the opening moments through to the end. Jordan is incredibly compelling on screen and is capable of making Smoke and Stack different enough that they can be kept separate. Jordan really needs to be remembered come Oscar time—there will not be five better male performances in 2025.

The only thing I’m disappointed in is the mythology that gets hinted at in the beginning and brought up a few times in the film. Sammie has the ability to essentially transcend time, space, and dimension with his music, and this is not something that is used too much. Sure, it’s one of the driving incidents in the film, but for something that is essentially the new idea to make this vampire movie different, it feels far too much like a dropped ball.

But you won’t care. That’s something that you think of a couple of hours after the credits roll. While the movie s running, you won’t care about anything but what is happening next.

Why to watch Sinners: This is as good a vampire movie as you will find.
Why not to watch: There’s a mythology introduced here, and not enough is done with it.