First Impressions: Sinners

 Hello there! It's been a while since I saw anything in the Theaters and I was happy to break that streak with Sinners (2025) which has gotten magnificent reviews and widespread acclaim. I didn't like it that much! I do think my criticisms are totally in line with any of the reviews that have been harsh on it, so I'll try to add to that fire. There were bits that were so rock solid in this as well, though. SPOILERS FOREVER, let's get into it!

The best summation is that this movie has an unreal first half that's grounded, interesting, well-produced, and frankly, amazing, and then a big turn into supernatural nonsense that goes completely off the rails. Let's talk about what works in the first half first and then how it all falls apart.

Longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan rejoins Ryan Coogler in dual roles here. It's nice that this isn't really a gimmick, it's pretty motivated. Jordan plays both Stack and Smoke, twins from the Mississippi Delta region who went up to Chicago to be gangsters and then came back home to open a Juke Joint. Everything about the character set-ups are really great and the performances are fantastic. Michael B really nails playing two characters, who are separated by red and blue hats, but also in subtle personality differences and mannerisms. Stack is a bit kinder, more empathetic. Smoke is more ruthless. But they both support each other and it feels pretty real. They're also both nuanced characters. Smoke will shoot a thief in the street on principle but also has the more stable and loving relationship. Stack will argue that hardworking sharecroppers should get a break, but he's also going to insult them (Cornbread) until they buy in. It's all really great stuff.

Delroy Lindo has had a resurgence with this and Da 5 Bloods (2020) where he also shined. He's a little bit comic relief but he has an intensity to him as well. Sammie is the guitarist whose soul is on the line (although it never really feels like it, probably because Michael B. Jordan is just too charismatic to be a tempter), Wunmi Mosaku plays a weary exposition dumper but also shades of empathy. The two Asian shopkeepers really have a nuanced relationship that's developed rapidly and they end up being the most stable love story that's really sold. I loved them dancing to the blues, it's a jarring but fitting mix of multi-culturalism. And they actually have a pretty pivotal part to play.

Then there's the white folk. This gets into the second half but the acting and characters are all great. This is B movie material that is elevated because of the commitment to these roles. There's a lot of structural problems here, none that have to do with acting or characters, except the Head Vampire was the one dude whose motivation was muddy as hell, but we'll get into that.

The first half shows this step by step set up of the Juke Joint. The Twins go around town, doing their thing, recruiting everyone they need. It's all motivated, no one is random, nothing really out of place. It's shot with impeccable composition and high contrast. The endless cotton fields of Mississippi have never been seen on film like that. They center around black neighborhoods and gatherings and it feels like a really coherent world. You get bits and pieces of backstory, constantly caught in a middle of a conversation but it's clear enough that you can figure out each characters' relationship. It's equally brilliant and sadistic when Stack gets Slim to play their joint by offering him a cold beer. It speaks to his desperation, alcoholism, Stack's moral gaps, and Slim's background, that a cold beer would be so rare that he'd instantly throw away his regular Saturday night gig. Stuff like that is amazing.

The movie puts all its pieces in place and then gets them all in one room for a huge party. The Juke Joint is great but the first flaw rears its head in that the spacing is difficult to establish. It's hard to know where the entrance is, where those huge barn doors are, where the backrooms are, all of which play a really important part but it's all kind of random. I kept thinking about The Hateful Eight (2015), which plays in a similar enclosed wooden place but has such a crystal clear sense of geography.

I also find it insane that Coogler seems to have trouble lighting black faces at night. There was a scene where Stack is talking to Hailee Steinfeld and he's wearing a hat and you just can't see the work he's doing at all. The white girl is fine. He eventually takes off the hat and you see him better. I couldn't really believe that Coogler would drop the ball on something like that, but all the great contrast and lighting in the first half evaporated in the second half.

Before we start trashing this, let's talk about the obvious best scene, when Sammie starts playing unreal blues that connects to music and ancestors from the past and future. It's a really cool moment (and one that shows good spatial geography!) and you see African drummers, modern funk guitarists, DJs, and you get this really great sense of everything. It's a soulful scene, one that I think people mistake for the whole movie when they call it good.

Immediately after things go off the rails from here. Vampires stop by and start killing people. So, the idea of vampires invading a party and a group led by two gangster brothers holding out until morning is basically From Dusk Till Dawn (1995), except much less zany. Where the movie trips is that all that careful plotting and character set-up and foundation of arcs immediately starts getting rushed. We don't get a ton of pay off for Delroy Lindo, who cuts his wrists to tempt the vampires but he doesn't really take any of them out with him nor does he really buy any of the survivors more time. It's a huge waste. Other important, established characters die really quickly without getting a moment.

I did get FROM vibes, which was cool. They were pretty strict about the vampires being unable to enter houses and they did a good job trying to trick people to come in. But maybe most importantly, I do not understand how the vampires in this film operate at all.

What is their deal here. Wunmi talks about how their souls are caught between life and the only way to free them is through death. But that is wildly inconsistent. We know that when you're turned you start sharing a collective memory. But what does that mean? Is it good to be a vampire? Like, they seem instantly happy but also instantly evil? Or is it even evil to want to turn others? Do they want blood or do they want to increase their brood?

This is going to sound weird, but I started thinking about Neighbors 2 (2016), which I though really fell apart by making the opposing sorority way too sympathetic. They spent so much time justifying every motivation that you didn't know who to root for and then felt bad when the good guys won. Sinners does something similar, but skips the motivation part. Are we supposed to sympathize with the Irish vampire whose culture was also taken away? It's just a hard pill to swallow and reeks of neo-conservative "Irish were oppressed, too!" bullshit, which is true but the Irish are so ingrained in white American culture by now that it's just not a leg anyone can stand on.

The reason why this sticks is because it seemed like the Irish Vampire's big desire was to bite Sammie so that he could co-opt his music to connect with his ancestors. This is just thematically all over the place. Is it a metaphor for white people seeking to dominate black culture and call it their own? That's what it seems on the surface but it also feels like the vampire's desire to connect with his past comes from a place of genuine pain and longing, not pure evil white folk stuff. But also, wasn't that whole dance scene a metaphor?! He didn't actually bring back his ancestors, right?! It seems to confuse all this stuff and just blows apart all the good work they did.

My understanding would be that when you're bitten, you're just a part of the vampire collective. But they explicitly say that killing the head vampire won't bring everyone back. Once you're bit, that's it. Fine, so kill them all to give their souls peace. But they they don't do that! They blatantly refuse and after Stack is bit, Smoke really should have been the one to kill him, although there is zero catharsis there. Stack needed to have some kind of sin, something to atone for, some big issue. They touch on their father and his abusiveness, but Smoke killed him, seemingly without regrets. There's not really an emotional motivation in the film for Stack to become a vampire and then it does not make sense that Smoke would not be able to grow enough to let go of his brother to kill him.

But then the ending entrenches further in two big ways. First, it does seem to ease off the vampires as being the main villains by just having a bunch of white former Klansmen show up and becoming a revenge fantasy for like, two seconds. Again, I kept thinking about the incredible spatial composition of a super similar scene in Rebel Ridge (2024), which is set up with such careful tension. Here it's just time to kill white folks. Again, Tarantino-esque in justified fantasy, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with the story or Smoke's arc. It was just a reason for him to be badass.

The moral of the story seems to be don't trust the white man? Or worse, that all black-businesses are doomed to failure? Shut up and keep sharecropping? They all die because they were tempted by making a bit of money! Or maybe it's that white folk come in and ruin everything with their cultural assimilation. There are some questions there. Would we be better off with a homogeneous and harmonious cultural stew or should we appreciate black businesses and black culture for its own sake and honor those differences? I'm not sure this movie has an answer, and that's not totally a bad thing.

And then there's the mid-credits scene. Little Sammie grows up to be Buddy Guy and has a great blues career and then is visited in 1992 by Stack and Hailee Steinfeld for some reason. First, I found it insane that Steinfeld literally didn't have a line here and is more a trophy in a film that has honestly been pretty great for female characters. This was the big clincher - is it bad to be a vampire or not?! Like, they just never show the horror. Are they even killing people if they're just turning them? They seem to have their memories and personalities intact. So where is the regret? Where is the conflict after being turned? Where is the struggle? Wunmi says "That's not your brother anymore!" to Smoke. ... Is he? Is it all manipulation by the Head Irish Vampire? I kind of feel like it isn't. Maybe killing the head vampire freed them of his memories? I don't know.

All of this is just from packing in two decent ideas into one movie. I think if it was to go this deep into mysticism we needed some kind of foreshadowing of vampires, some kind of set up for emotional catharsis, and some kind of pay off for all the work they did in the first half. I think about the title, who were the Sinners and what was their sin? I don't think I need stuff spelled out but when there's so much conflicting motivation present it makes it really muddled. This movie makes me angry for how good it could have been. It's not like just watching a bad movie. It's like watching the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl. You had it! And then blew it.

I will say again - the acting is amazing, the characters are so rich, the shots and progression in the first half are so good it makes this movie worth watching.