“You keep dancing with the devil,” says Jedidiah, a Southern preacher warning his son Sammie against heading into the city to play the blues. He pauses, the lines on his face deepening. “One day, he’s gonna follow you home.”
This conversation takes place in the first 15 minutes of Ryan Coogler’s blues-inflected horror film “Sinners.” Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, the movie is a passionate and fresh — albeit at times allegorically confused — message about the ownership of the years of Black artistry and culture that birthed the blues.
The first half is an incredibly stylish exploration of racism, generational trauma, poverty and violence. It opens with twin brothers Smoke and Stack — each played with a different hat and equal charm by a brilliant Michael B. Jordan — returning to Mississippi after an ill-fated trip to Chicago, and buying a formerly white-owned sawmill to turn into a juke joint. They recruit their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), whose vintage guitar and auditorium-shaking voice headline their opening night. Coogler sweeps his camera through the crowd of Black partygoers dancing to Sammie’s music in the joint as the audio begins to warp, and dancers and musicians appear from different cultures and time periods — treating us to a dazzling and utterly original tribute to the power of the blues.
The second half of the film is less successful, as it pivots to become a (spoiler alert!) blood-drenched vampire action flick. The addition of vampires to the Southern gothic narrative was a refreshing and original move on Coogler’s part. The problem is that the movie ultimately relies on Hollywood stock tropes about vampires rather than embracing what seems like the much more interesting supernatural premise embedded in the film: that music can pierce the veil between the living and the dead. While the vampires are clearly meant to be an extension of this premise, the gore-and-garlic-fest that ensues trivializes rather than deepens Coogler’s fascinating central conceit.
The allegory about vampires and “cultural appropriation” also quickly becomes puzzling. Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an Irish-inspired vampire, works as a symbolic antagonist: he represents the “white man,” a sinister and ravenous force intent on drinking the blood of Black culture in the 20th century. But when Stack’s girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) and the juke joint’s bouncer Cornbread (Omar Miller) are also “turned,” the metaphor collapses. Perhaps making all of the vampires white seemed too on-the-nose, and Coogler attempted to remedy that by having several of the Black characters turned as well — but the allegory breaks down when the lines between predator and victim start to blur without any clear thematic reason.
Even so, the film — as well as the story of ownership behind it — makes a powerful argument for the value and vitality of Black artistry and the long, ongoing history of its exploitation. Its ambition, originality, and insistence on reclaiming both narrative and legacy ensure that “Sinners” will leave its mark.
