SINNERS - Mark Reviews Movies

Sinners, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 18, 2025

Writer/director Ryan Coogler pulls from history and multiple strains of folklore for Sinners, which creates its own unique and convincing bit of mythology. The story is set in the Deep South of the United States—rural Mississippi, to be precise—and in 1932, where and when the wounds of slavery are still a thing of memory and discrimination still exists in the letter of the law. Our heroes are identical twins, Black men who escaped this place for Chicago and saw the two places to offer quite similar experiences for them, and all they want to do now is start a juke joint, throw a grand opening-night party, and make enough of a profit to keep the place going. By the end of the night, the party descends into near-literal hell.

Coogler devotes the final act of this story to a bloody showdown with a group of outsiders, before another violent confrontation with a more local brand of evil comes to pass. It's a potent metaphor for how it seems that forces on earth and in the supernatural realm simply will not allow these men, their relatives and loved ones and friends, and everyone else in the joint to have one night in which they can forget everything that has kept them down and continues to do so. Until some creepy folks with blood-red pupils show up at the club, things go pretty well, too.

Sure, the screenplay opens with a brief flash-forward that promises matters will only get worse before the story is finished, but the film isn't really about that for a long stretch of time. No, it's about one brother's business acumen, both siblings' potential to maybe rediscover some love with a pair of women who see through their obvious flaws, a cousin's skill at playing and singing the blues, and the way that a great party with plenty of people just wanting to have a good time and forget their worries, booze, and music can become a transcendent experience.

The whole narrative feels like some old, forgotten legend of Americana, a shaggy dog story, or some combination of both. It definitely is a myth, given that the main villains are undead creatures that have persisted through a couple centuries of storytelling, and it certainly is a tale that's as interested in its little details as it is in the bigger ones that come to define the final act. The film is mainly, however, a lot of fun, because it embraces the joyful, impromptu spirit of its build-up as much as it does the over-the-top climax—if not more so.

About half of the story, really, is about watching twin brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, putting together their opening-night celebration and, then, becoming caught up in the pure, ecstatic thrill of the party. Jordan's dual performances—not to mention Coogler's technical trickery to make the effect seamless (The characters' introduction has them passing a cigarette back and forth, almost to show off what the filmmakers can do)—are quite good. Smoke is the brother who likes to negotiate and compromise, while Stack has a harder edge. Both men aren't above resorting to violence when negotiations fail or patience runs out.

The characters, though, are one part of the wider tapestry of characters here. They include the twins' younger cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), the son of a sharecropping plantation preacher, who has been learning guitar and taking his feelings of being stuck in this place to become quite the talented bluesman. He's determined to play at his cousins' juke joint this night to prove he has the chops and hopefully start a new career.

Some other characters include a trio of strong women: Smoke's wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), who practices Hoodoo and has been left behind to mourn the loss of both the couple's child and marriage, and Stack's ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), whose mother raised the twins and whose maternal grandfather was mixed race, and a local woman named Pearline (Jayme Lawson) who immediately catches Sammie's fancy and can't resist the young man once he shows off his skills. Delroy Lindo plays more established bluesman Slim, while Omar Benson Miller plays Cornbread, a field worker whose wife convinces him to cover the door for the night. Li Jun Li and Yao play Chinese immigrants who run shops across the street from each other and admire the brothers' entrepreneurial spirit.

With all of these characters and relationships and broader ideas in place, the film does become a party, filled with music and dancing, some conflicts and intimate encounters, and a genuine feeling that this is all these characters need at the moment—meaning it's all the story requires, too. Coogler revels in the show, employing assorted one-takes to follow something happening in the joint, intercutting different moments to the rhythm of the music, and, in the film's most boldly ingenious scene, seeing Sammie's music as part of the broader, enduring past, present, and future of culture. It's a form of literal magic, which catches the attention of Remmick (Jack O'Connell), a supernatural entity who knows much about that kind of musical mysticism.

To say more might be unfair. The film does ultimately give us a series of standoffs and showdowns with Remmick and his ilk, who are monstrous but aren't necessarily monsters, given their own spiritual relationship to music and their ability to transcend the petty hatred of which humanity is capable. There's something almost pitiable about them (especially if one considers that Remmick might once have been a young man much like Sammie), so even when Sinners turns into a horror tale with plenty of action, it is still doing something different, audacious, and compelling.

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