Major spoilers ahead for Sinners. You’ve been warned.
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Ah, vampire movies. Where would we be without them? Probably a lot less entertained. Ever since F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu in 1922 up to Robert Eggers’ 2024 remake, the bloodsucking children of the night have been some of our all-time favorite movie villains (and sometimes heroes, depending on the story). But they never get old – literally or figuratively. Now writer/director Ryan Coogler’s the latest to throw his hat into the vamp ring with his original story, Sinners. Does it rank with the best, worst or somewhere in between? Read on to find out.
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Sinners takes place in 1930s Mississippi. Narration says that music – the truest kind of music, like the blues – has the ability to pierce the veil between life and death. To summon the spirits of the past, present and future. But it also has the ability to summon evil.
A young man named Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore (Miles Caton) drives up to a church on a sunny morning. He walks into the middle of the Sunday service, where his father (Saul Williams) presides as pastor. Sammie looks like he’s been through a war, all battered and bloody. His father prays over him, telling Sammie he needs to stop playing the devil’s music and repent. But Sammie just holds on tighter to the broken guitar neck in his hand.
Cut to a day earlier. Twin brothers (and Sammie’s cousins) known as Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) arrive back home after spending years in the Army and then in Chicago working for the mob (it’s implied that it was for Al Capone). They purchase an old sawmill building from a former Ku Klux Klan member, Hogwood (David Maldonado), with a suitcase full of cash that we kind of assume is stolen.
Smoke and Stack plan to start up their own juke joint and warn Hogwood that if he or any of his Klan cronies step foot on the property, they’re dead. Hogwood laughs and assures them that the Klan doesn’t exist anymore. Smoke then drives into town with a truckload of alcohol and asks a young girl to keep an eye on it for him. Then he goes to the grocery store, owned by his friend Bo Chow (Yao) and his wife, Grace (Li Jun Li). Smoke hires them to provide food and make signs for the juke joint’s opening night.
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Then Smoke hears the truck horn and comes out to find two guys trying to steal some of the booze. He shoots one in the butt and the other in the leg before they realize whose truck it is. Everyone in town knows of Smoke and Stack and their reputation for being dangerous men.
Meanwhile, Stack’s out recruiting Sammie, giving him the guitar that belonged to the twins’ father. Sammie sings and plays for Stack, who’s blown away by the music coming out of him. Then they head out to the cotton fields and find another guy named Cornbread (Omar Miller) to work the door.
Stack goes to the train station, where a local musician, Slim (Delroy Lindo), plays for the crowd. He wants Slim to play for the juke joint, but Slim says he already has a regular gig. So Stack appeals to Slim’s alcoholism by offering him more money and as much Irish beer as he can drink.
A young woman named Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) approaches them – Stack’s former girlfriend. She scolds him for never sending her any word of his whereabouts, and for not sending flowers to her mother’s recent funeral. Stack doesn’t want her to know about the juke joint, considering it an unsuitable place for her.
Another young woman, Pearline (Jayme Lawson), approaches Sammie and teases him about not playing church music. Sammie knows Pearline’s married but still flirts with her, asking if she’ll sing at the juke joint. Pearline plays it cool, but it’s clear she’s interested.
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Meanwhile, Smoke visits his ex-wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku). He brings flowers and lays them on the grave of their child. Annie asks him what he and Stack are up to, and is disapproving of the juke joint idea. But Smoke asks if she’d do the cooking that night.
Annie practices hoodoo and says that she’s been doing protection rituals to help Smoke and Stack in all the time they’ve been gone. Smoke still wears the mojo bag she made for him. She and Smoke grieve the loss of their child and still love each other even though they’ve been apart for years, and end up having sex.
Just before the sun sets, a white guy named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) runs to a cabin, banging on the door, smoking like he’s about to catch fire. A woman named Joan (Lola Kirke) answers the door with a shotgun aimed at him. Remmick says he’s running from the local Choctaw tribe. Joan’s husband Bert (Peter Dreimanis) comes to the door, and Remmick offers them unusual gold coins in exchange for shelter.
Not too long after, a few Choctaw show up at the cabin. The scout (Mark L. Patrick) asks Joan about Remmick, but she says she hasn’t seen anyone. He warns her that Remmick is dangerous and to be careful before she shuts the door on him. Then she goes to the back of the cabin to find that Remmick – who’s a vampire – has attacked Bert and turned him. Joan screams as they attack her.
Word gets around fast about the juke joint, and a decent-sized crowd shows up that night. Smoke gets angry when he finds out that Stack’s letting people pay the cover charge with plantation credits. Smoke says that they’ve used up most of their Chicago money setting up and can’t afford freebies. But Stack and Annie convince him that if they’re willing to bend the rules a bit, then more people will show up over the coming weeks – and more people means more money.
As Slim gets the crowd warmed up with his piano, Mary shows up at the door. Cornbread tries turning her away, but Stack reluctantly lets her in. Then Sammie makes his debut, belting out the blues with his soulful voice and guitar and putting the whole crowd in a seductive trance. As they dance and Sammie sings, spirits from the past and the future appear among the crowd – musicians and dancers from all cultures.
The music is so powerful that it appears to burn the place down, drawing Remmick, Bert and Joan. They come to the door, but Cornbread won’t let them in. Smoke comes to the door asking what they want, and Remmick says they’re musicians, too, and just want to join in. They play a famous old blues tune, “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” and they sound good, but it’s not juke joint-type music.
Remmick even offers Smoke the gold coins, but he still refuses to let them in. So Remmick walks away, but he stays within sight. While Pearline takes the stage and belts out a sultry tune that has everyone stomping their feet in rhythm, Mary decides to go out after Remmick to find out what his deal is. He, Bert and Joan play a lovely bluegrass tune for her, and she almost decides to tell Stack that they’re okay. Then she notices Remmick’s eyes glowing red and turns to leave – but Remmick attacks her.
Cornbread takes a pee break, getting Slim to watch the door. But while Cornbread’s outside, he’s attacked by Bert and Joan. Meanwhile, Slim lets Mary back inside, and she and Stack go into the back room to have sex. Smoke finds a guy using loaded dice and tells Sammie to go get Stack. Sammie walks in and sees Stack and Mary going at it and leaves.
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He goes back to Smoke, who tells him he doesn’t care what Stack is doing and goes to get him himself. He opens the door and finds Mary attacking Stack. Smoke shoots her several times, but she gets right back up. She tells him they’re “gonna kill every last one of you,” and then runs outside.
Smoke desperately tries helping Stack, but his wound is too deep and he bleeds out. Slim and Annie tell everyone else to leave, and the crowd reluctantly files out. The only others who stay are Sammie, Pearline and Grace. Then Cornbread shows up at the door, asking to be let back in. Annie realizes what’s going on and asks Cornbread why he has to be invited in. Cornbread tries to attack Smoke but gets shot in the face.
Then Stack busts out of the back room, having turned. Annie tosses a jarful of garlic juice at him, and he runs outside. She tells everyone what they’re dealing with – vampires. She gives everyone the crash course in Vamp Killing 101 – garlic, wooden stakes and the sun. They bust up furniture and sharpen chair legs into stakes. Then she has everybody eat raw garlic to prove they’re still human. Slim freaks everybody out with his reaction, but turns out he’s just really drunk.
The vamps have a party of their own outside, rocking out to “Rocky Road to Dublin” while Remmick busts out some impressive Riverdance moves. Then he, Stack, Mary, Bert and Joan come to the door to try again to get invited in. Remmick tells Smoke that the whole deal to buy the mill was a setup. Turns out the Klan is alive and well, and Hogwood’s Grand Dragon of the local chapter. Hogwood’s plan is to have his guys kill Smoke, Stack and everyone else in the joint. Stack confirms it, since he now shares memories with Remmick.
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Remmick offers to turn them all and keep the juke joint running. He saw and felt the power that Sammie’s music has and wants to keep him so that he can conjure more of Remmick’s ancient clan. He says they can all live forever, and with him, there’s no such thing as racism. They can all live happily ever after together.
Of course Smoke refuses, as does everybody else. Remmick lasers in on Grace and says their next stop will be the grocery store, where they can attack her and Bo’s (who’s also been turned) daughter. Furious and scared, Grace screams at them all to come get them. Nice move, Grace.
The melee begins, and Grace jumps on Bo, staking him as they both burn to death. Most of the vamps get staked or burnt, but both Pearline and Annie get attacked. Annie begs Smoke to stake her, and he tearfully kills her. Stack and Mary see it, and enough of their humanity remains that they mourn her.
Then while Smoke and Stack fight, Remmick goes after Sammie, who bashes Remmick with his guitar, which explains how it’s broken. Remmick slashes Sammie’s face, also explaining his wounds in the beginning. By this time, the sun’s about to come up. Stack grabs Mary, and they run off into the woods.
Smoke stakes Remmick, and he bursts into flames, as do the remaining vamps. Then Smoke tells Sammie to take his car and get away before Hogwood shows up. Smoke then grabs a trunk full of weapons, which he and Stack took from their time in the Army.
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The Klan shows up in several trucks, ready to slaughter everyone – but they find the doors locked. Then Smoke launches his attack, laying waste to them all with a Tommy gun and grenades. But one of them manages to get Smoke through the liver. Hogwood lies on the ground, also mortally wounded. He tries offering Smoke more money, but Smoke just empties a magazine into him.
Then in his dying moments, Smoke sees a vision of Annie with their baby. She hands the baby over to him, and he cradles it as he dies. Then we’re back to the intro, and Sammie’s at the church. He tells his father he’s not giving up being a musician and ends up leaving Mississippi to go north.
And in a fantastic mid-credits scene, we see elderly Sammie (the legendary Buddy Guy) at a club in 1992, shredding on an electric guitar, still belting out the blues. After closing, Sammie sits at the bar. The bouncer tells him there’s a couple at the door offering a couple of hundred dollars to get in. Sammie agrees to let them in – and it’s none other than Stack and Mary, looking like true 90’s fashion victims.
Sammie’s uneasy, but Stack and Mary aren’t there to kill him. Stack tells him that Smoke couldn’t bring himself to kill him. He told Stack to go and leave Sammie alone. Stack takes a whiff of Sammie’s scent and deduces that Sammie doesn’t have long to live anyway. He offers to turn Sammie so he can keep making music, but Sammie says he’s had about enough of this world. Stack asks for a song without the electric guitar. Sammie gets his old guitar and peels off a song in his effortless way, just as powerful as ever. Stack slams down the $200 (wearing a cheesy, gold bling ring with his name).
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Sammie tells him he still has nightmares about the juke joint. But by the time the sun went down, it was also his best day. Stack agrees, saying it was the last time he saw the sun, the last time he spent with his brother and the last time he felt free. They all hug, and Stack and Mary leave Sammie in peace.
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So far, 2025 has been a great one for the movies, with flicks like Novocaine, Mickey 17 and Drop really bringing the fun. So I went into Sinners with more expectations than usual, especially given Ryan Coogler’s impressive body of work. And for the most part, I really dug it.
Coogler’s all about sensuality with Sinners, presenting us with a visual feast that plunges you into the time period. He composes shots so that you can almost feel the sweat on your brow, the mud under your feet and smell the catfish frying. And everybody’s either having sex or at least talking dirty. The musical sequences soar and pound with passion, making you want to put up your hands and witness, if not outright dance.
The characters are all fun as well, so spirited and unafraid to live even though their lives are full of hardship. Michael B. Jordan adeptly handles portraying the twins, though I will say that Smoke and Stack didn’t have enough going on with them individually to make it easy to tell them apart. It’s one of the flick’s few issues, but it won’t stop you from enjoying it.
It’s Miles Caton’s Sammie and Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie who are the flick’s MVPs. Annie’s the hoodoo soul of the deep South, stealing every scene she’s in. And Miles Caton’s the beating heart – his sweet innocence, even with the down-deep blues he manages to produce, makes him an almost angelic soul, one whose existence is all the more incredible given the prevalent racism of the time.
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If there’s any real problem with Sinners, it’s unfortunately the vampires. There’s a fun, pulpy From Dusk ‘Til Dawn (1996) vibe happening, which is not a bad thing at all. But even though Jack O’Connell puts his all into making Remmick a charismatic bad guy, the whole vampire aspect of the story kinda feels like it’s being shoehorned in. The two halves of the flick – the family drama and dealing with the Klan (which comes off almost as an afterthought) and the vampires – they butt heads instead of finding a flow together, which is unfortunate.
On the whole, though, Sinners is a lot of fun with a soulful, passionate heart. It’s best enjoyed on the big screen with a kick-ass sound system, where you can lose yourself in the sultry time period and the outstanding music. Even though it’s not entirely and totally a vampire flick, fans of the bloodsuckers will certainly find enough blood and gore and pointy teeth to sink their own into.
Written and Directed by: Ryan Coogler
Release date: April 18, 2025
Rating: R
Run time: 2hr, 17min
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
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