Sinners is Ryan Coogler’s magnum opus

Around the second half of the movie, there is a scene involving the song 'I Lied to You' in which one of our tritagonists shows off their skills as a blues player. The scene comes at the head of a capacious and meticulously built first half – which is filled to the brim with depictions of the Black South in the early 20th century, when Jim Crow, public lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) ran rampant. It is within the established historical realism of this world that Ryan Coogler injects a measure of magical realism in a scene that celebrates the history of a culture's past and its future. For the Black South, the genre of Blues was sacred – and for Coogler, the very idea of music, sin though it may be, is the beating heart of the film.

But there are layers to this narrative, ones that extend beyond the simple ideas of music and culture. The story, on the surface, resembles something like From Dusk Till Dawn, with the first half serving the task of establishing a world fully lived in by characters that are fully fleshed out. This is followed by a sharp turn in the second half, where the introduction of vampires completely shifts gears for this film, converting it from a drama to a survival horror. But the story of Sinners shines because of its insistence on straying away from genre conventions. Here, Coogler presents us with a mix of horror, drama, and magical realism built on top of a foundation established through the reality of the American South's history.

It also does not hurt to see Sinners adorned with some of the most colourful characters we've seen in film all year. The Smoke-Stack twins, both played by Michael B Jordan, clearly have a rocky history with the world around them. Returning to their hometown after swindling the Italian and Irish mobs in Chicago, the twins buy property from a racist white man to start their own Juke Joint. This is how we find Sammie, the heart and voice of the film, played magnificently by Miles Caten, who is at odds with his preacher father to pursue his love for the Blues. 

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Then there's Hailee Steinfeld's Mary, who has known the twins since they were children, coming into the fray as the only major biracial character. Delroy Lindo plays an aged Blues musician, Delta Slim, who inspires Sammie and serves as the sole comic relief character in the film. Wunmi Mosaku as Annie, Smoke's love interest and a Hoodoo practitioner, is the only one in the Juke Joint who responds with intelligence to all the problems that arise as night falls and seemingly unknown forces make themselves known.

Each of these characters has stories that feel fresh and unique. The way they connect to the themes of culture and the subsequent theft of it adds to the overall world of Sinners in ways that feel inventive and meticulous.

There is also Jack O'Connell's Remmick, the Irish vampire who does not reveal himself until an hour's worth of delineation has already established the world and its characters. It is within this chaos that Remmick arrives, not only as a white man trying to take over a black community but as someone who is cut off from his own history and culture. At the hands of a lesser filmmaker, the vampires would not have been handled with the layered approach that is present here, but Coogler seems to have a grasp on how to handle spectacle with a pinch of history.

While the film is not inherently horrific the way horror films tend to be, there is something unnerving about the history Coogler has put up on display. When the film pivots and escalates, it provides spectacular horror but what makes the film special are the layers upon layers of details and history Coogler has injected into each frame. From drawn-out scenes of cotton picking against a big blue sky and Country-Blues music to anecdotes of friends being lynched, Sinners is often more than what meets the eye.