Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is 1930s Mississippi, twins Smoke and Stack — both Michael B. Jordan — coming home to open a juke joint. There are vampires. That is not really what the movie is about.
Smoke is the stoic one, war in him. Stack is the charmer with too many secrets. The monsters have teeth and familiar faces. Grief, bloodline, what this country buried and called soil. It is not a clean horror movie. It did not need to be.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s light looks like molasses and gossip. The music — blues, gospel, those strings — does more than most dialogue. Miles Caton as Sammie plays a song that moves the whole room on screen. That one lands in the body.
The movie does not pause to explain Blackness. Juke joint, side-eye, how people sit in silence. Hailee Steinfeld, Glynn Turman, Aunjanue Ellis. Two post-credit scenes. Questions when the lights come up beat a tidy moral. Some of it is doing too much. The soundtrack still wanted the car after.
Vampires are the plot. The juke joint is the movie. Coogler does not stop to caption Blackness. The music does more than most of the dialogue. Questions after the credits beat a moral.
