Sinners Works on Every Level

I've said for years that the mark of a good horror story (and any story, by the way) is engaging characters with compelling personal stories beyond whatever terror they're facing in the plot. The mark of truly great horror, is a story that, if you took the horror elements out of the plot, it would still be a good book/movie. The latter is rare, but is certainly the case with Ryan Coogler's genre-bending period film Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers Stack and Smoke who bite of more than they can chew (pun intended) when they open a juke joint in their hometown, only to attract the attention of an Irish immigrant vampire named Remmick (Jack O'Connell) and his growing brood of undead followers. The film is many things at once: a well-crafted period piece that showcases the inequities of the Jim Crow South, a hard-hitting crime film in the era of Prohibition, a slick, masterfully crafted music video/musical tribute to the blues and the power of song, and yes, a vampire film.

The film follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who, after returning to their home in Mississippi after spending time working in Chicago, presumably with organized crime, to purchase an old mill and turn it into a juke joint to make some money. They enlist the help of old friends, family, and local talent, including their cousin Sammie, an aspiring bluesman, and plan a big grand opening of music, bootleg liquor, Southern cooking, and all the vice you ask for. The narrator (Ryan Coogler himself) tells the viewer early on that music can connect to the past and the future, the drawback being that it can also attract evil, which it does, as the tour-de-force combo of Sammie, who turns out to be more than aspiring, he is a clear talent, and local hard-drinking legend Delta Slim (played by the always-excellent Delroy Lindo) attracts the attention of Remmick, an Irish vampire with a song of his own to share.

The first half of the movie works on every level, long before a single fang or wooden stake appears on the screen. The Moore twins are the local bad boys come home, yet they are more than petty gangsters, both Smoke and Stack (played uniquely by Michael B. Jordan) have stories of their own. It turns out Smoke has a woman he left behind, one he had a baby with that didn't survive, something that still haunts them both, and Stack has a messy domestic attachment of his own to a married local girl named Mary. The movie deftly navigates the hard economic and racial realities of the Jim Crow South without delving too deeply into them. Were no vampires to show up, the movie still would have worked as a small-town crime picture, the climax perhaps a final confrontation between the Moore brothers and the white men they bought the mill from, who may or may not be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Though Michael B. Jordan and the Moore brothers are the stars of the film, the heart of the picture is clearly Sammie, played by acting newcomer Miles Caton. Sammie is the prototypical young man with a dream, in his particular case, his key out of the cotton fields, away from poverty, and away from his preacher father, is his guitar. The Moore brothers try and warn him off that life, but Sammie's determination is resolute, and his talent is fierce. The musical sequence at the heart of the movie is a Fever Dream, a trip through the history of African music that is stunning to watch.

Because the film is so full of depth on so many other levels, the vampire Remmick perhaps does not get enough screen time to develop him as a viable antagonist. Of course, he isn't the antagonist - poverty, racism, and the choices we make are the antagonists in this film, but Remmick himself is an interesting character. He comes singing songs himself, revealing little snippets of his time growing up in Ireland. The movie almost feels like a musical at times, alternating between blues and Irish folk music in an interesting clash of cultures.

Once the vampires arrive, the movie takes on mostly familiar tropes and motifs one would expect from a vampire picture. At times light-hearted, at other times terrifying, the final battle between the survivors at the club and the growing cadre of vampires outside is bloody in all the best ways.

A horror movie, a drama, a crime film, Sinners has a lot going for it - excellent production values, an amazing cast, an awesome soundtrack, and more. It accomplishes something that is hard to do: it is a unique and original vampire film that is also a damn good movie.