It is simple enough to say a movie is suspenseful, but how do you quantify how suspenseful it is? Here is one way. Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners generates so much suspense — and then sustains it for so long — that at one particularly anxious point I heard a small snap from my seat. I looked down and realized I had tensed up and squeezed my notebook so hard that I cracked its back cover. (Yes, I take notes during movies, like all extremely cool persons do.)
So yeah, Sinners is pretty intense.
And if that’s all Sinners was, that would already make it worth seeing. But this movie is way more than just an effective thriller. It’s the rare studio production that engages your intellect while it scares you senseless. And after the messy Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, it firmly reestablishes Coogler as one of our finest working Hollywood directors.
The film’s trailers are careful not to reveal all of the movie’s shadings and themes. As a result, Sinners not only jangles your nerves, it surprises you too. It keeps switching gears, zagging into one delightfully unexpected sequence after another, even while consistently delivering the scares required of any supernatural horror story. A couple of its unconventional shifts of style and tone are so bewildering they made me laugh out loud with glee. I’ll do my best to preserve them when discussing the plot.
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Coogler’s longtime star Michael B. Jordan stars in the dual role of twins Smoke and Stack. (Their names are one of Sinners’ many allusions to fiery damnation, a recurring theme in this film about freedom and temptation in a dangerous world.) Returning home to rural Mississippi in 1932 after a stint in the Chicago underworld, the brothers plan to use a stockpile of cash to open a juke joint that caters to the area’s poor black farmers. The club’s opening night draws a large crowd, along with several of Smoke and Stack’s associates and former lovers ready to help the pair get their business off the ground.
The attendees includes Wunmi Mosaku’s Annie, who shares a sad history with Smoke, and Hailee Steinfeld’s Annie, who had a furtive romance with Stack and whose recently deceased mother helped raise the twins from childhood. There’s also a local business owner couple (Yao and Li Jun Li) who provide the joint’s food, and a drunken old bluesman (a scene-stealing Delroy Lindo) lured to the bar by the promise of genuine Irish beer fresh from Prohibition-era Chicago.
He’s there to provide the evening’s entertainment with the twins’ younger cousin Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton), a gifted blues guitarist who dreams of leaving Mississippi (and his reverend father’s church) for a career in music. Sammie has a rich, soulful voice, but, as Sinners’ opening voiceover warns, cultures throughout history have written legends about talents so great they attract the attention of evil forces. Sure enough, Sammie’s big performance coincides with the arrival of a mysterious Irish drifter (Jack O’Connell) with a smile so friendly it’s downright sinister.
While I will leave you to discover exactly what O’Connell’s character wants and why, it’s not a spoiler to say Sinners eventually takes on the contours of a survival horror film. But Sinners is in no rush to get to its violent climax. It patiently assembles its cast, leaving ample room to fully introduce and explore the psyches and backstories of its heroes (and even some of its villains). It follows Smoke and Stack as they launch their bar, and lets their interactions with business partners, family, and friends reveal their desires and dreams, along with the bleak realities of the Jim Crow-era South where they live.
By the time the bloodshed finally begins, Coogler (who also wrote the film) has fleshed out these characters so thoroughly — and the actors have invested their roles with so much humanity — that it’s even more stressful watching their struggle to survive. The pressure in some of these sequences is almost unbearable. (I mean, I broke my notebook for crying out loud.)
And while all of this is happening, Coogler is also telling a much larger and allegorical story about America and music and cultural appropriation and the myths we tell each other about the origins of brilliant artists. Somehow, all of this stuff fits together in one fairly economical film that’s also terrifying, sexy, and occasionally quite funny.
It’s a huge swing of a movie, and pretty darn close to a home run. My only complaint: After delaying its big confrontation for so long, Sinners’ inevitable confrontation between the survivors and monsters at the juke joint is a little abrupt and anticlimactic. Coogler does such a masterful job of prolonging that standoff that I didn’t want it to end; I would have happily sat and watched another hour of unbearable tension.
Then again, leaving viewers wishing a movie was longer isn’t the worst sin in the world. And the way Coogler resolves Sinners’ central ideas within a traditional horror story framework is truly masterful. He plays the audience like a fiddle. Or a blues guitar.
Additional Thoughts:
– Post-credits scenes are often a waste of time for everyone involved, both on the screen and in the audience. The two in Sinners are worth staying for — the first one is essential to fully understanding Coogler’s ambitions. Don’t leave until you’ve at least seen that one.
-I’m not the only person who has noted this, but it is so strange that in the span of about two months Warner Bros. has released three different films where big-name stars play twins or doubles: Mickey 17 with Robert Pattinson, The Alto Knights with Robert De Niro, and now Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan. Is the Warners market research division telling them people want more movies where A-listers play opposite themselves? For what it’s worth, Sinners is the best of the bunch, and certainly the best movie I’ve seen in 2025 so far.
RATING: 9/10
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