Sinners [Review]
“You keep dancing with the Devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home”
Sinners, the 2025 horror film directed by Ryan Coogler, is—and I do not say this lightly—one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
The plot follows twin brothers who return to their Southern hometown in an attempt to escape their troubled pasts, only to find an even greater evil lying in wait. Michael B. Jordan delivers a mesmerizing dual performance as Smoke and Stack, brothers fleeing Chicago for the South, only to confront horrors far worse than what they left behind. Wunmi Mosaku stars as Annie, Smoke’s ex-partner and a practitioner of Hoodoo; Hailee Steinfeld plays Mary, Stack’s estranged former flame; and Li Jun Li shines as Grace Chow, a local grocery store owner dragged into the chaos. Rounding out the stellar cast are Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim, an alcoholic bluesman, and Miles Caton (in his acting debut) as Sammie, Smoke and Stack’s musically gifted cousin. Each actor brings depth and authenticity to their roles, making the world feel lived-in and real—even with vampires lurking in the shadows.
Speaking of vampires, Jack O’Connell is chilling as Remmick, an Irish-blooded vampire seeking to expand his coven. The film weaves a deeply original narrative with cultural homages rarely seen in cinema. Watching it, I found myself thinking, “In 100 years of film history, I’ve never seen anything like this.” (And no, that’s not a confession of immortality… or is it?)
Movies about the American South are nothing new, but Sinners presents it in a way that feels revelatory. The film captures the richness of Black Southern life—its struggles, its resilience, and its quiet, everyday beauty—without reducing its characters to mere victims. Too often, white directors approach Black stories with pity, framing every moment as unrelenting misery while ignoring the warmth, community, and small joys that persist even in hardship. As someone who loves the South—the crickets singing on a porch under a haint-blue ceiling, the taste of fried catfish & Kool-Aid on a hot day, the glow of fireflies at dusk—I recognized the delicate balance Coogler strikes. The South is a land of deep love and deep terror, where the scars of segregation, Jim Crow, and sharecropping exist alongside the unbreakable bonds of community.
The film’s beauty is undeniable—shot in IMAX, it unfolds like a Gordon Parks photograph come to life (kudos to cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw). But what truly captivates me is its core message, which explores two intertwined themes: Black liberation and white alienation.
The Black characters in Sinners are acutely aware of their place in the Jim Crow South—the unspoken rules dictating where they work, who they love, and how they navigate a world built to suppress them. Music becomes their refuge, a lineage stretching from African traditions to blues, bluegrass, and beyond. It’s a means of transforming pain into power, of forging connection in the face of oppression. Yet, as history shows, white America has repeatedly co-opted Black music, stripping it of its origins while deriding its creators. The film asks: Why this relentless theft? White musicians have their own folk traditions—Irish ballads, European harmonies—so why the insatiable hunger to colonize Black sound?
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The answer lies in Remmick, the Irish vampire antagonist. He craves Sammie’s musical gift, which holds the power to bridge past, present, and future. Remmick is lonely, severed from his ancestors, his people—his very identity. Vampirism, here, is a metaphor for cultural disconnection. He converts others into his hive mind, but no amount of followers can fill the void left by his lost heritage.
In contrast, Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie, a Hoodoo practitioner, remains rooted in her spiritual traditions—a fusion of African, Indigenous, and Christian beliefs. Her connection to the past is her strength, a shield against the vampires’ predation. White supremacy, like vampirism, demands the same sacrifice: to assimilate is to sever ties with one’s ancestry, language, and culture. In that surrender, white people lose too. There’s no room for Irish dance or song in a system built on erasure—only hollow conformity, a living death. When Christianity supplanted Celtic traditions in Ireland, it was its own kind of vampirism, a cultural severance that bred generations of alienation in Irish Americans.
Somehow, Coogler balances all these ideas effortlessly. Sinners is a film about the horrors of racism, the theft of Black artistry, the cost of white assimilation, and the violence of forced conversion—all wrapped in a gripping, sweat-drenched, sensual, crowd-pleasing horror masterpiece. With this film, Coogler cements the Southern Gothic aesthetic in the way Eve’s Bayou, Beloved, and Lovecraft Country have before, just as he redefined Afrofuturism with Black Panther. His voice is so distinct, so potent, it feels like magic—as if he’s a modern Griot, weaving ancestral stories into a bold new vision for cinema.
5/5 - Don’t talk to me about anything other than this movie.
If you live near Seattle, you can use my code: VONGHOUL417 for 2 free tickets to see the movie opening weekend, April 17-20th at SIFF Downtown. Run, do not walk, to see Sinners.
